A Musical Connection
by quicksilversquared
Summary: In a world where soulmate bonds can range from a simple matching mark to timers to shared dreams, of course Adrien would get saddled with an inconvenient bond that keeps him from going out and living life- because whenever his soulmate sings, Adrien has to as well. But the singing, as inconvenient as it is, presents another opportunity. Can Adrien use it to track down his soulmate?
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: So, some backstory on this AU! (there are spoilers vaguely mentioned, aka the new villain being introduced) Hawkmoth and Mayura have been defeated. Because Mayura ended up being a bigger problem, Hawkmoth turned on her and helped bring around her defeat before being defeated himself and because of that, Mr. Agreste only really got a fine and community service time instead of being sent to prison._

 _(this was 100% not just a quick timeline fix just because I needed Mr. Agreste around. Nope, nuh-uh, no way.)_

 _There will be 12 chapters to this AU (how did it get so long. How. Why.) and it will be posted between HTFAM updates._

 _Enjoy!_

* * *

Once upon a time, Adrien would have been thrilled for any sign of his soulmate, inconvenient or no. In a world full of people getting their soulmate marks starting as young as ten and usually developing during the mid-teen years, he had remained woefully unmarked all the way through collège, then lycée and into university even as his friends almost all received their marks.

It wasn't unheard of, of course. There were at over a dozen different types of soulmate bonds, ranging from the standard matching soulmate marks that could show up whenever to marks that showed up the first time two soulmates touched to less visible and incredibly rare bonds to no bond at all. Some people remained unmarked right until they died, but most got their marks well before they turned twenty.

Adrien hated it. He had wanted to have a soulmate, someone who he would just click with and have by his side forever. It became a bit of a sore point for him as time went on and his skin remained clear and unmarked.

His father, on the other hand, loved Adrien's complete lack of marks. It was a pain to have to put concealer over soulmate marks on models that were in exposed areas like the legs or arms, especially since the concealer often showed up a little funny on camera and had to be photoshopped in order to look normal. The fact that Adrien was naturally unmarked also helped as a selling point with fangirls who wanted to imagine that they might have a chance with him simply because he didn't have a claiming mark on him.

He hated that, too. He was a person, not a commodity to be claimed by people who didn't even know him.

Back when he was in collège, Adrien had had a theory that he and Ladybug were soulmates with a color-touch bond. Those soulmates didn't have a marking until they touched skin-to-skin and with the suits in the way, there was almost no way for him and Ladybug to touch unless they met outside the suits. He kept that thought with him for two whole years, clutching it close to him when he was having a particularly bad day and wanted the reassurance that there was someone out there for him and that that person was his Lady.

And then one day, that hope was shattered to pieces. He had narrowly escaped being killed by an akuma during an attack and Ladybug had pounced on him in a hug as soon as the fight was over and they could breathe. Their cheeks brushed past each other, pressed together for several seconds as she clung to him, and parted.

He knew as soon as she pulled back that no mark had appeared. Ladybug had simply smiled at him before vanishing over the rooftops as her timer's beeping increased. He had checked the moment he got home, just to be sure.

He'd stayed in a funk for a solid three weeks after that, even with Plagg's assurances that cheese was better than girls anyway.

It wasn't as though he could hug cheese, or as if cheese could hug him back.

He knew other people who were unmarked at the time, of course. While most people who got spontaneous marks got them on average between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, there were always the late bloomers and the color-touch soulmates. There had been two others in his lycée graduating class without any marks, Marinette and a boy in the other homeroom. Neither of them seemed particularly bothered, though maybe it was just because they had never really talked about it. He hadn't seen the other boy since, which made sense as they had never been friends, and he had only seen Marinette a few times in passing. Her university courses were keeping her busy, Alya had explained when Adrien had asked about Marinette's continued absences at their get-togethers. If it wasn't class then it was her job or an internship that threw her schedule off just enough to make meet-ups with the rest of them nearly impossible. He was glad that she was being kept busy though, because that meant that she was faring well in an incredibly competitive field.

Still, it would have been nice to have someone he could talk to about his ongoing lack of a soulmate mark. Was it normal to feel this incredibly discouraged about its continued absence? He could ask Ladybug, of course, but he didn't _want_ to. He didn't want to know if she already had her soulmate mark- of course she would, there was no doubt about it in his mind but it would hurt to have it confirmed- or, heaven forbid, if she had already met them. It was better to just keep his thoughts and questions to himself. He never brought up the subject and neither did she, despite the numerous soulmate-related akumas that they had had to fight over the years prior to Hawkmoth's defeat.

Then, two months into university, he burst out into song during a photoshoot. He couldn't stop it, couldn't control it, could only barely manage to get it down to a level where passersby wouldn't stare. Within minutes, Nathalie was informing him about the Musicals Soulmate bond, an incredibly rare bond that made itself known when one person sang and the other person was forced into accompanying, words coming to them even when they weren't familiar with the song. Not much else was known about the bond, which wasn't great.

Adrien didn't care. He was thrilled beyond belief, practically bouncing on his way home because _he had a soulmate out there_. There was someone who was his perfect match, who he could spend the rest of his life with once he found them.

It didn't take long for the implications of his bond to sink in after that first initial thrill.

Because of the fairly sporadic nature of the singing, Adrien was forced to abandon his normal university classes. He finished up the semester with the Gorilla videotaping the lectures for him, and then he had to switch to online coursework. It reminded him a little too much of being homeschooled again, though at least he could go out whenever and meet up with Nino (and Alya, and every once in a blue moon, Marinette). They couldn't really study together in the library because of Adrien's unpredictable bond, and places like cafes soon became a bit uncomfortable thanks to people staring. He could still get together with Ladybug- and thus far he hadn't broken out in song when he was with her, which he was endlessly grateful for- but he was nervous that that lucky streak might end soon. As photoshoots got interrupted more often and other models started staring, Adrien started dreading the singing more than he used to. By the time his soulmate bond had been active for three months, the novelty had worn off.

And now, a year later, Adrien was getting tired of it.

The tickling at the back of Adrien's throat only gave him seconds of warning before he was forced to break out in song. Despite the fact that the forced singing told him that his soulmate was healthy and happy (or at the very least alive), Adrien couldn't help but be a bit exasperated. The photoshoot he was in the middle of doing would have to wait until his soulmate was done singing or would have to be done in between verses, and that would make everyone on set grouchy and his father would be upset for the scheduling delay and the extra money the overtime would cost.

Sometimes he couldn't help but wish that he didn't have such a _disruptive_ soulmate bond.

"Aaagh, not again!" Pierre exclaimed, stamping his foot in frustration as Adrien tried and failed to repress the singing. "She has no schedule, your soulmate! Every day, she is singing! You must find her soon, Adrien!"

Adrien's brow creased. As soon as the bond's grasp on his voice faded, he blurted, "How would finding her even help?"

Pierre _tsk_ ed. "How would it help, he asks! How would it not help? It would stop the singing!" The photographer stepped behind the camera and snapped a couple shots before Adrien's part of the song started again.

"I don't want her to have to stop singing if that's what makes her happy," Adrien argued. He slid effortlessly into another pose and paused, letting Pierre snap a couple more photos. The photographer looked pleased for a second, but decidedly less so as song bubbled out of Adrien's throat again and they were forced to pause again.

"She does not have to stop singing!" Pierre spoke over the sound of Adrien's voice. "I had a model a few years ago with the same problem as you, and she went and tracked down her soulmate. They kissed, and the problem stopped. Her soulmate could sing and all she would feel is a little fizzy and happy inside. You need to do the same!"

Adrien perked up. He hadn't even known that was an _option._ "How did she track down her soulmate?"

"I don't know. It's not my problem. Okay, next pose, chop chop! Let's try to finish up in fifteen minutes!"

* * *

Adrien sat in front of his computer, staring blankly at the screen as he thought about what Pierre had said. Even though he had asked and begged (and bribed), the photographer couldn't remember the name of the other model with a musical soulmate bond and he wasn't willing to spend any of his precious time to try to look up who it might have been.

"This is _impossible_ ," Adrien groaned, banging his head against the keyboard. He had tried to google ways of finding your soulmate, only to find cheesy sites saying that _the time will come and it will be magical_ or _don't rush fate; it will take its time_.

Not particularly helpful.

Plagg hadn't been even remotely helpful either. Despite being an immortal god who had doubtless had Chosens with almost every type of soulmate bond, he apparently hadn't paid enough attention to be of any help. Despite bribing his kwami with cheese, it hadn't helped stir Plagg's memory at all. Apparently the only thing Plagg had ever paid attention to over the centuries was cheese.

After another thirty minutes of useless searches, Adrien reached for his phone and called Nino. His best friend might be able to think of something.

"He said that the singing stops after you kiss?" Nino asked as soon as Adrien explained what Pierre had said. "That's super cool if that's actually true."

"I know. And even if it's not true, it's not the singing that I mind as much as constantly having to worry about bursting out into song." Adrien worried his lip. "I just don't have any idea on where to start with looking. One of the models suggested that I go out in public and just start singing and see if anyone joined me, but there's, like, a two percent chance that my soulmate would actually be there-"

"And a ninety-nine-point-nine percent chance that everyone else in the area will think that you're crazy- wait!" Nino exclaimed. "All this percentages talk- you know who would be able to come up with a plan? Max!"

Adrien perked up at the suggestion. "Our old classmate Max from collège and lycée? Are you still in touch with him? Yeah, he'd definitely be able to come up with a plan!"

"He was in one of my general classes last semester and we'll be in the same class again next semester, and then he's been doing a project this semester that I'm doing a music mix for- oh!" Nino said, suddenly cutting off whatever he was going to say. "He's supposed to come today, actually, and I think that was him just now knocking on the door. Hold on a second, I need to go answer that."

Adrien opened his mouth to say something before he was cut off by a clatter as Nino tossed his phone on his desk. He waited a bit impatiently, fingers tapping against his computer desk for a few seconds before he tapped in another search query. Nathalie had once told him that getting the right results relied on using the right keywords. It was possible that he hadn't found the right combination yet.

He still hadn't found anything useful by the time Nino came back on the line with Max.

"Max is here and I've already told him everything," Nino said, his voice a bit muffled as though he wasn't talking directly into the phone. "Hopefully we can figure something out."

"Yes, well, we should." Max's familiar voice was a bit clearer, making Adrien guess that he had probably taken control of Nino's phone. "Congratulations on the soulmate thing, by the way. If I recall correctly, that was a bit of a sore point for you in school."

Adrien only winced. _Had he really been that obvious about it?_ He had thought that he had hidden that pretty well, but apparently not.

"I have some question to ask, of course." There was a pause, during which Adrien pictured Max adjusting his glasses on his nose so that they balanced _just so_. "Are you certain that the kiss reducing the need to sing actually works for all musical soulmates? It might just be some. Soulmate bonds are often unique and don't always abide by the same rules, even those within the same category."

Adrien had thought about that as well. "I don't know. It's a really rare soulmate bond, according to the sources I found online. That's pretty much all the information I could find about it."

"I also cannot find any data on the subject. There is a distinct lack of research concerning the rarer bond types. I suspect that it has something to do with the government ban on soulmate bond research. It's quite a pain." The sound of Max's fingers clicking against Nino's keyboard floated through the phone as he spoke. "At the very least, finding your soulmate would allow you to ask her to keep her practices at times that don't fall during your photoshoots and your father's runways."

Adrien made a face at that. He didn't really _want_ to do runways- the stress and insanity he had seen backstage was not particularly encouraging and it wasn't like he wanted to continue modelling professionally forever- but his dad wanted him to and was always frustrated when the face of the Agreste brand couldn't walk the runway for fear of him breaking out in song partway down the walk.

At least it wasn't song _and_ dance. That would be awkward.

"Let's just focus on the whole _finding her_ part, then," Adrien suggested. "Do you have any suggestions on how I could do that?" Max was definitely the best person to ask about this, he realized. The other boy was very methodical about his approaches to, well, _everything._ If anyone could come up with a procedure that was 99.8% likely to produce results, it was Max.

"Of course. I just have a few questions for you before I come up with a plan. Have you tried singing back?"

Adrien shook his head, then remembered that Max couldn't see him. "No. I just didn't think of it at first, honestly. I don't usually sing much to begin with, either. And then once I _did_ think of singing back, one of the other models I work with mentioned that considering how often and how regularly she sings, she might be in some sort of performance major. And then I didn't want to deter her from that path by making her worry about me interrupting her at random."

"That is a very good point." There was the sound of a pen scratching across paper as Max wrote that down. "Nino said that she tends to sing a lot of songs from musicals. Is there ever a pattern to the songs? Like, does she ever sing the same song at the same times every night or several times a week?"

Adrien tried to wrack his brain. "Uh, maybe? I usually don't pay much attention to what we're singing. Sometimes she sings along to Jagged Stone's songs." Actually, it was more like _quite often_ that she sang along to Jagged's songs. At least his soulmate had a good taste in music, though he wasn't big on musicals. Still, it was possible that it had more to do with having never seen one in person and that the extent of his experience with them was being forced to sing the songs when he didn't really want to.

...yeah, that made him sound like a sourpuss. He was spending too much time with Plagg. He didn't mind the singing when he was alone- in fact, he quite enjoyed it, and sang as enthusiastically as he could, relishing in the bond- but not being able to go to university in person and having the rest of his life interrupted periodically really _was_ a pain. He had had enough with the being confined in his house when he was young.

Max _tsk_ ed at him. "I would suggest figuring out what song you are singing and keeping a log of when you sing. If there is a pattern, she is likely performing somewhere and then we try to figure out where that might be."

Adrien cringed. Ah, he should have thought of that himself. It was a very logical first step. "Ah, right. Of course. Sorry I wasn't doing that already."

"That's perfectly fine. It will just delay our timeline a little bit. I can still come up with a plan." Max sounded as professional as always. It was slightly disconcerting knowing that that tone of voice was coming from someone no older than he was. "You will keep a log, and contact me as soon as you see any emerging patterns. Nino will send you my contact information within a few minutes."

Adrien nodded along. "Sounds easy enough."

"If you notice one song or a set of songs popping up frequently, she could be auditioning for something. If not, we will have to try some other approach. You could always sing a few songs while several other people spread out and look for anyone singing in public, though that would be our last approach. I believe looking for performances first is our best bet."

Adrien nodded again, even though Max couldn't see him. "That sounds good. Thank you, Max. That sounds like a great plan."

"I'm glad to help. I hope you find your soulmate soon."

* * *

 _Next time: Adrien starts collecting data.  
_

 _And as always, reviews make my day! :)_


	2. Chapter 2

_So quick note before the second chapter: so, I spent FOREVER trying to look up French musicals instead of using ones that I knew. Google told me that the French largely just translate musicals that are popular into French and use those. I don't know how accurate that is, but I just went by that (and this story HAS been completely written, so I'm not really sure if I can go back and change anything really easily). Also, second disclaimer: I have never really been in theater and only have a very vague idea of how it works, so my deepest apologies if I completely butcher that._

* * *

"You seem distracted, Chat Noir."

Chat Noir startled when Ladybug addressed him. He tore his eyes off of the skyline he had somewhat absently been staring at to whip around and face her. "My Lady?"

"You've been quiet and you've been staring at the same spot for the last three minutes. Are you feeling all right?"

Chat Noir managed a smile that he _hoped_ was at least passable, but he was sure that she could see right through it. His Lady knew him too well to be tricked. "I'm fine, My Lady. Just thinking."

It was no surprise what he was thinking about. Just like he had done for the rest of the day, Chat Noir was thinking about his soulmate and what Max had said. He wasn't doubting his friend's methods, not at all, but he was nervous. Having a plan made his soulmate seem more _real_. He'd also spent some time wondering if maybe his Miraculous combined with the fight against Hawkmoth had delayed the development of his soulmate bond.

It would have been absolutely _disastrous_ for him to break out in song during fights, after all, and it would definitely threaten his secret identity. He would probably have found his soulmate pretty fast, since he was in the public eye so much, but then Hawkmoth and Mayura would have had an easy target with him distracted by the singing and it would be an easy step for his soulmate- and Hawkmoth- to figure out that she was matching with both Chat Noir and Adrien Agreste, since there were only so many people out there with a Musical soulmate bond. Plagg hadn't confirmed or denied Adrien's guess, only yawning obnoxiously and asking for more cheese when pressed.

Ladybug understandably didn't look any less confused.

"It's just stuff in my civilian life," Chat Noir explained, knowing full well that that would mostly discourage Ladybug from questioning him further. She might have become a little more lenient about them sharing (vague) details about their civilian lives since Mayura and Hawkmoth's defeat, but there was still a line they stayed behind.

"Ah." Ladybug paused, clearly contemplating whether or not she should question him further. "...is it about your university again?"

Chat Noir shook his head. He had told Ladybug about having to drop out of traditional Uni courses, though he hadn't told her why. She had been puzzled about it, of course, but telling her anything more would probably just end up revealing his identity. "No, it's something else. I shouldn't be worrying about it, really-"

Ladybug raised an eyebrow. "Do you really mean that, or are you just trying to play something off again?"

Chat Noir grinned a little sheepishly. "It's...well, I do have reason for _some_ worry but it's really not that serious, I promise. It's less worry and more butterflies in my stomach, really."

"As long as they aren't evil butterflies," Ladybug said with a laugh, sharing a smile with Chat Noir. It was easy to laugh about it now, now that Nooroo and Duusu were safely back with Master Fu. "...is it anything you can talk about?"

Chat Noir shook his head. "No, but thank you for the offer, my lady. I _do_ have people in my civilian life I could talk to about it, though."

 _Could_ , not _would_. Nino and Alya wouldn't understand his ball of nerves, since they had known each other fairly well even before their soulmate marks kicked into place. Max had met his soulmate a year prior during his Calculus class. Marinette was- well, she was busy. And there was no _way_ he was going to have any sort of heart-to-heart with any of his father's staff or the other models. Nathalie had given the _feelings_ talk a half-hearted try once, and it had been the most awkward ten minutes of his life before she gave up.

(After all, Nathalie's soulmate bond was platonic, not romantic, and she had never desired anything more than that. Finding her soulmate hadn't even been a large deal for her.)

He would be fine. Besides, patrol wasn't supposed to be for moping about. He didn't get to see Ladybug often anymore, so he had to make the most of it now.

His soulmate- wherever she was, _who_ ever she was- could wait.

* * *

Adrien spent the next week diligently recording songs on the palm-sized notebook he kept stuffed in his pocket at all times. It made Pierre groan and his father (and Plagg) roll his eyes at the "playing detective", but it was producing some interesting results. There _was_ a pattern to the songs, with several being sung incredibly regularly. Adrien found himself scrambling to write down the lyrics as they were ripped out of his throat, and soon he became familiar with three songs that his soulmate seemed to sing the most. He called up Max as soon as he knew his friend would be free.

"Oh, Little Shop of Horrors!" Max exclaimed as Adrien listed off the songs. "That's a fun one, if perhaps a little morbid. I'll look up where it's being played right away. We'll have to go to those performances and see when you sing along. Uh, we might need to call ahead so that we can make sure you don't disrupt the performance."

Adrien winced. Once again, his soulmate bond was keeping him from living his life like a normal person. "Yeah, I don't want to be that jerk making noise in the audience."

"Of course not. I would expect nothing less from you." There was a tapping sound as Max searched the internet for shows. Seconds later Max made a frustrated noise, and Adrien sat bolt upright in his chair. That didn't sound particularly promising.

"Is something wrong?"

"There aren't any shows in Paris right now. There's a couple lycée and collège-level performances across the country- junior acting groups out of theaters, you know, the kind that Aurore and Mireille went to- but I'm not seeing any professional or university performances."

Adrien choked, horrified. " _Collège_ level? Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding me. Are you positive?"

"Unfortunately, yes." A couple more clicks. "Although it _is_ possible that she's just auditioning for a part or they're still practicing and it's not being advertised yet."

"I'm hoping that it's just not being advertised yet." The idea that his soulmate might be _significantly_ younger than him made Adrien a bit uneasy. A _lot_ bit uneasy. "Where should we proceed from here, Max?"

There was a pause as Max thought. "Keep doing your log. I'll keep an eye out for advertisements about Little Shop of Horrors, and I'll keep a list of the collège and lycée performances, just in case. We might need to wait for several shows to pass to narrow things down a bit."

Adrien groaned.

"We _will_ figure things out," Max promised him. "I know the waiting isn't exactly ideal, but if we wait for a few shows, then we'll have our theaters narrowed down." There was a crash on his end of the phone, and Max swore quietly. "Uh, I gotta go. But keep me updated!"

"Right, bye," Adrien managed before the line went dead. He stared at his phone for a moment, then sighed and flopped back on the bed. Above him, Plagg cackled.

" _That_ went well. So you'll get getting a young girlfriend, huh?" Plagg teased, floating above Adrien. Adrien scowled at the kwami, reaching down to pull off his sock to throw at Plagg.

"No, I _won't_. Max said that it's possible that the show that my soulmate is in hasn't started being advertised yet." Adrien waited until Plagg had tunneled his way out from under the sock before continuing. "And if it turns out that my soulmate _is_ from one of the performances going on now, then I'll just have to deal with the singing for a few more years until they're at _least_ in university before I even try to find them."

It wasn't a perfect solution, of course. Having to wait _years_ to be able to live his life normally again would stink- and to be honest, Adrien would have preferred to think that he didn't have a soulmate for another five or six years until his soulmate was a bit older if their worse-case scenario was correct. But there _was_ still a chance that his soulmate's performance wasn't being advertised yet, and she was actually the same age as him.

It didn't take long for Nino to hear about what Max had found out. He made a beeline over to the Agreste mansion as soon as he heard, slipping in and dashing into Adrien's room before Mr. Agreste could spot him.

"If your soulmate _is_ younger that might explain why it took so long for your bond to show up," Nino offered a bit unhelpfully as Adrien groaned from his spot on the floor. "Granted, it would be even _less_ creepy if it waited until you were, like, thirty or something."

"Max said she might still be in audition or rehearsal stage," Adrien said, voice muffled by the pillow he had tugged over his head. Why was _everybody_ going with the worst possible option? Thank god for Max's levelheaded suggestion, because otherwise Adrien would be feeling rather discouraged right about now. "I'm going to believe that until otherwise disproved."

"How long has she been singing these songs?"

"I don't know. I wasn't paying attention." He was regretting that now for sure. If it was recent, then maybe they could have struck the younger performances out already. "I can't believe that we didn't think of contacting Max earlier. We could have known by now."

Nino shrugged, completely unconcerned. "Eh, you live and you learn."

 _Easy for you to say,_ Adrien thought mutinously as Nino changed the subject and started talking about a new movie that had come out and that he had seen with Alya. Nino and Alya had known about their bond for _years,_ ever since their marks had bloomed on their skin their second year of lycée. Their marks were inconspicuous, easily hidden at the crook of their elbows, and didn't keep them from going out and living like normal people. Besides, both of them were the same age. _They_ didn't have to worry about being matched with someone years their junior. Marinette probably would have been more understanding, but she was busy at her job.

Plagg was no help either. Besides not telling Adrien whether or not the Miraculous had delayed the development of his soulmate bond, Plagg wasn't helping at all with Adrien's log of the songs he sang. The kwami refused to look lyrics up for him, refused to record anything in the notebook, and had even started singing other songs at the same time when Adrien was trying to listen to his own lyrics. Plagg claimed that it was because he was tired of listening to the songs Adrien's soulmate was singing, but Adrien had spent enough time with the kwami to know better. Plagg just liked irritating him.

Thankfully, Adrien kept singing the same songs even after the college and lycée performances ended. Max found two university shows plus one professional show playing the musical in France shortly afterwards.

"I'm assuming that she's French, since she tends to sing in French," Max told Adrien. "I mean, there _are_ other countries with French as their official language, but eighty-five-point-seven people find their soulmate in their native country and some of the other songs you mentioned are popular in France but haven't gained as much traction elsewhere."

Adrien looked at the locations of the shows. Only one of the shows, one of the two university ones, was located in Paris. The other university showing was in a city on the far side of the country and the professional theater group was equally far away, only in the opposite direction.

"She may not even be in any of these performances," Max said, idly clicking through his laptop and ignoring Adrien's distressed look. "New show listings are showing up all the time. We will know when she stops singing the old songs and moves on to something else."

"Isn't there any way to tell before the performances end?" Adrien begged. "I'd like to find her sooner rather than later, because dad wants to know if I'll be able to walk for the winter collection runway." _He_ didn't want to participate, necessarily- he'd rather stay far, far away from that mayhem- but it was better not to disagree with his father, even now that Mr. Agreste had lost his Miraculous. After all, his father was paying for his university degree and providing a roof over his head, and even the short stint in jail plus the year of community service hadn't made Mr. Agreste any more agreeable.

Max adjusted his glasses and peered at Adrien. "Well, we _could_ try to compare when the singing normally occurs and see how it lines up with the performance times. One moment."

Adrien watched as Max brought up several tabs and peered at them before writing something down in his neat block handwriting on his clipboard. Once finished, he showed the sheet to Adrien. "These are the show times. Based on the timing of the shows and accounting for intermission, these are the times you should expect to be singing each song. If you find that they match, then we get you to that show. If not, we keep waiting. On the off chance that my timing is off, we just wait for her next show. The odds of more than one of these groups doing the same two shows in a row are minuscule."

Adrien grinned, taking the sheet. "Great! I'll let you know if this- oh, _no,"_ he groaned as the tickle built up in his throat. "She's gonna sing- _Downtown! Where the folks are broke. You go downtown! Where your life's a joke-"_

Max chuckled. "Well, I think that's my cue to leave," he said, closing his laptop. "Let me know if the singing lines up or if your soulmate switches songs. Best of luck with that."

Adrien nodded, grimacing as best he could as he sang and waving good-bye to Max.

" _Down on Skid Road..."_


	3. Chapter 3

_Once again, disclaimer: I've never done musical theater and never worked backstage. Please excuse any inaccurate portrayals as artistic license._

* * *

Marinette let out a long breath through her nose as she marked down the last of the repairs for the outfits in her university's production of Little House of Horrors. Thankfully there weren't many costumes that needed fixing- the cast members were careful not to be _too_ rough on their outfits, which was nice- but it had still been a long day of hustling outfits around and getting them on and off of people, making small little alterations where she noticed problems.

The first strains of music drifted back from the stage up front, where the dress rehearsal was going on. Marinette smiled at the familiar music, humming along as she set up her sewing machine and rethreaded it with the properly colored thread. She started singing along as she sewed, making sure that her voice stayed quiet enough not to disturb the performers up front. She knew the words to pretty much all of the songs by heart by now, after hearing them for weeks and weeks, and Tikki did as well. The kwami had even started trying to act out all of the parts as she sang, which provided Marinette with a bit of entertainment whenever her kwami stayed backstage with her instead of heading out to watch the show from behind the seats.

"Marinette! How are the alterations coming along?" The faculty theater director, Ms. Bella, poked her head into Marinette's workspace, smiling at the sight of the petite girl buried in fabric. Tikki vanished into the pile with a squeak. "There were only a couple things, right? Most of the actors were in costume."

"There's not much to do. Kendra's outfit is almost done. Just let me trim the threads here." Marinette finished the seam she was working on, removed a couple pins, and snipped the excess thread hanging off the new seams. "I have two more outfits to do, and one of those is just repairing a sleeve hem that got partially torn out. The other is just a small bit of mending that I'll have to do by hand."

"Fantastic." Ms. Bella beamed at her. "Now, as you know we have another musical that we'll be casting for pretty soon. We'll be doing Mary Poppins as our second musical of the semester, and we're actually working with a collège to get younger students to play the children. I'll get you the list of what outfits we either need to find or sew as soon as I can. There's quite a few lovely outfits with that show."

Marinette perked up. "Oh, of course! That sounds great!" She hoped that there would be some more chances for her to sew outfits from scratch than there had been with the current show, where it really was mostly street clothes. "…but the bulk of the work can wait until after midterms, right?"

Ms. Bella laughed. "Of course. I just want to get you everything you might need right away, so you can work at your own pace. I'll let you know how many outfits there are soon, and get you an inventory. Once we cast, you can start getting measurements." Ms. Bella smiled at Marinette again and took the dress she was holding out. "I'll get this to Kendra. Thank you so much, Marinette!"

With that, she vanished back out the door.

Marinette bent back over her sewing machine, determined to get the last few alterations done as fast as she could so that she could go out to the auditorium and watch the rest of dress rehearsal. She might even be able to get some sketches done for one of her classes before it was time for people to change back and hang their costumes up. She wasn't needed right now since the understudies were dealing with the costume changes for this dress rehearsal, but there was no way that she was going to let them put things away unsupervised. The one and only time she had done that, the clothes racks had been chaos and no one could find anything fast enough the next day. Of course, _she_ was the one who got in trouble from that, since she was the costume manager, so she wasn't going to let that happen again. She didn't want to lose her job, even if it wasn't _quite_ what she had envisioned herself doing as a fashion student.

Besides, being able to hear (and occasionally see) live musicals was awesome, even if she was backstage helping with outfit changes most of the time, only really getting to venture out for a break when the actors didn't have any costume changes or when there were other people around to help during the practice. While musical songs were no Jagged Stone, they were fun songs and got stuck in her head on a fairly regular basis. She had found herself humming one song or another more than a couple times while heading from one class to another. Marinette truly enjoyed her job, and as a bonus, it paid well.

As Marinette reached for the last outfit, the music swelled again. Marinette grinned and sang along happily, enjoying the energy and upbeat tempo. Repairing the sleeve didn't take long at all to finish, and soon she was covering up her sewing machine and handing over the last outfits to the performers. She sat out in the seats in the auditorium with the actors that were waiting their turn to practice onstage, listening to their conversations as she sketched out an outfit for one of her design courses. Some of the students were discussing classes, others movies that they had seen, and others-

"What do you mean, there's a site for matching soulmate tattoos?" a girl one row in front of Marinette demanded, staring at her friend. She got a glare from the stage manager, and she lowered her voice. "Why? I thought people weren't supposed to actively search out their soulmates!"

Marinette's heart dropped and she tried not to listen in, focusing on her sketchbook as she added a shoulder detail to the jacket she was designing. Soulmates were _not_ her favorite subject, not at all. But she couldn't exactly just get up and leave, not when she had just sat down, and the conversation was impossible to _not_ overhear, since the two other girls were sitting _directly_ in front of her.

The girl's friend shrugged in response to her question. "Technically we aren't allowed to actively search out soulmates, but why shouldn't we? What's the point in _not_ looking? Besides, it only works if both people put in a picture of their mark. If not, then the site can't do anything. If someone doesn't want to find out ahead of time, then they won't. It just gives people the _option_."

The first girl let out a snort. "Some people are going to such _ridiculous_ lengths to figure out who their soulmates are before their time. The marks are for confirmation, not for searching. What if people meet before they're ready and-"

"Sophie, can we just agree to disagree on this? Some soulmates might not live near each other and this way, they actually get to meet. I _do_ think the site has a minimum age requirement, if that helps."

Marinette winced and looked away. She had never had a soulmate mark, which put her in the minority of the population. Tattoos and timers weren't the only soulmate connection so it _was_ technically still possible that she had one, as Tikki had constantly reminded her when she was younger, but she was starting to think that she didn't. No tattoo, no timer, and when she wrote on her skin, no one wrote back. There were stories of rarer forms of soulmate bonds, sure, but there were also stories of people without.

And for someone like Marinette, who had grown up on romantic stories of people finding their soulmate and had always looked forward to finding her own, it was _really_ discouraging to not have _any_ sign that anything was going to happen.

The debate about whether or not people should search out their soulmates continued until the actors were called up for their scene. Marinette breathed out a sigh of relief as they left and went back to her sketches, trying to push the conversation from her mind.

She didn't resent other people for their soulmates, but boy would it be nice to know she had one too.

"Are you okay, Marinette?" Tikki asked, flying up to perch on the armrest between the seats once the seats around them had cleared. "You know that I've _told_ you that you might just have some other soulmate mark. If you're the color-touch kind and you haven't met them yet, maybe-"

"I _guess_." Tikki had told her that before, and Marinette had to admit that she could have a point. But somehow Marinette just had a feeling that that wasn't true. Color-touch soulmates often said that they had been drawn to a certain color even before they met their soulmate, and then their mark ended up being that exact color. While Marinette had liked pink well enough when she was younger, she wasn't drawn to it in the same way.

Dress rehearsal came to a close, and Marinette quickly gathered up her things and ran backstage to make sure all of the costumes ended up in the right spot. Several of the cast members stayed behind to help, enough that things went quickly but not so many that it became a mess, and then Marinette was headed home.

"I wish I had enough time to meet up with Nino, Alya, and Adrien more," Marinette told Tikki as she crossed a road. "And Chat Noir, of course. But this job has been keeping me so busy in the afternoons and evenings because of when rehearsals are, and that's when they're free."

"Are you going to look for a different job, then?" Tikki wanted to know. "As an intern at a fashion house instead of in the theater? You would have different hours, so you would actually have evenings off almost all of the time."

Marinette thought about it for a minute. Trying to switch _had_ been something she had considered more than once, but she had never followed through with the thought. An internship would be more focused on the fashion world, that much was true, but would it _really_ be possible to get one that would work as well around her class schedule as her current job did? Would she be able to find something that would pay as well? The university theater didn't pay _buckets_ of money or anything, but at least it was above the minimum wage, and they understood if she had to come in late or step out for a bit in order to make it to a class. Marinette had heard stories from older students who had gotten an internship at a fashion house and then had to limit what design electives they took to fit with their internship schedule, while all they learned at their "job" was all of the designers' coffee orders and how to survive on a _very_ small paycheck.

 _That_ would be less than ideal. At least now she was actually sewing and learning how to fit people of all shapes and sizes. Maybe she could get a part-time job as an intern for a fashion designer over the summer, and split her time between the studio and backstage. But that was a decision for future Marinette.

"I don't think I'll switch out of being the costume manager," Marinette told Tikki. "It works with my classes, at least, and it pays well and the people there are fun to work with. And that's what's important right now." No matter how much she missed her friends, she _did_ have to consider other things when making any decisions about her job. Besides, she would get to hang out with them again once the show was over and before the next one got into dress rehearsal stage. It wasn't as though she was too busy to meet up with them _all_ the time.

Tikki looked pensive, but smiled up at Marinette. "As long as you're sure!"

"I'm sure."

* * *

For all the work that musicals were, there were only six shows and then it was over. Marinette stayed late on the last night of the show to pack up all of the costumes and sort out the ones that could probably be used in other productions. It was a lot of work and she had had to miss yet _another_ get-together with Alya, Nino, and Adrien, but at least she was getting good references for it.

"Two days off, and then we'll need you in again to start working on organizing the outfits for Mary Poppins," Miss Bella told Marinette. "We'll start with pulling out old costumes that can be used again and doing the simpler outfit alterations, and then we'll see how much there is left to be made."

"That sounds good," Marinette said, beaming. She already had the soundtrack to the musical on her iPod and boy, was she ever looking forward to the new production. She already had new favorite songs from the track and was singing them all the time. As Miss Bella left to make sure that the set designers were storing things properly, Marinette began to hum.

" _A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down..._ "

"I like the new songs better," Tikki commented as Marinette worked. The kwami peeked out of Marinette's bag and once she saw the coast was clear, she flew out to help sort smaller items. "They're really cheery! I know the old play was just for fun, but some of the songs made me shiver."

Marinette giggled as she wrestled another garment bag shut. She double-checked the label before moving it to the rack that was to go into the costume storage room. "It wasn't _real_ , Tikki."

"But these are still better." Tikki laid a necklace down in a box next to its matching bracelet. "And they're fun-"

Footsteps in the hall cut Tikki off and the kwami hid. Seconds later, the door opened and a stagehand stuck her head in, grinning.

"Melissa's soulmate timer just went off! Do you want to come see her new guy?"

"Uh..." Marinette couldn't do much anything besides stare. After a moment, she shook herself and composed herself enough to reply fairly normally. "I think I'll pass. They probably want to talk by themselves without too much of an audience."

The other girl snorted. "Melissa, not wanting an audience? Impossible. But you have a point," she added. "Her boy might not be comfortable with the attention. I just thought I'd let you know. I'm sure everyone in the department will know by the end of tomorrow anyway. Good night!"

"'Night," Marinette called back, waiting until the door had closed before letting her shoulders slump. Great- just what she needed to bring down her good mood. Maybe she should have left this whole mess for the weekend and gone out with her friends tonight instead. But she had heard through Alya that something regarding Adrien's soulmate bond had come up recently, which meant that it would almost definitely be the center of conversation for the entire evening.

Marinette knew she should be happy for her friend. He hadn't been happy about not having a bond when they were younger and out of everyone in the world, he definitely deserved happiness and someone who would truly care about him. But Marinette had liked knowing someone else without a mark of any sort, even if they never talked about it. Now she had no one to talk to about her continued lack of any sort of soulmate connection.

Well, it wasn't as though they had ever really talked about it anyway.

Marinette sighed again and shoved another dress into another garment bag. She was happy for Adrien, really. But some days, she just didn't want to think about it.

"You haven't gotten to see Adrien a lot recently, have you?" Tikki asked, almost reading Marinette's thoughts. "What is he up to again, do you know?"

"Well, he's taking uni classes online now, instead of in person. You know that, he started doing that last year after the first semester." Marinette had been surprised to learn that, but she supposed that it made _some_ measure of sense. Adrien had been doing more photoshoots and commercials now that he was older, and it was probably inconvenient and costly for _Gabriel_ to have to have special photoshoots that fit around Adrien's schedule. Online courses meant that he could do things on his own time.

It _was_ strange that he hadn't appeared in any of his father's runways. She had meant to ask about that- the papers had certainly had a field day with it, speculating why Gabriel Agreste's son hadn't walked. The speculation was only made worse by the fact that Adrien _had_ once done a runway show, in their last year of lycée.

"What's he studying?"

"He wants to be a science teacher," Marinette said, remembering the grin on Adrien's face when he told them. He was clearly excited about the idea, and it meant that he would be able to get out from under his father's lengthy shadow at last. "He'd be fantastic at it, I bet. He's really good with kids, even though he's an only child, and he's good at breaking down concepts to explain them." She frowned. "...but I'm not sure that he can really do his entire degree remotely like this. There have to be _some_ discussion classes and labs that have to meet in person."

Tikki frowned as well. "That _is_ true," she agreed. "I would think that that would be one of those degrees where talking to others in class would be really beneficial."

"Maybe he'll go back to going to classes in person when he gets past the science stuff and into the teaching part of his degree," Marinette suggested. She knew Adrien had told them what steps he would have to take to get his dream job, but that had been _ages_ ago, back when they were just starting out in university and she hadn't gotten her job in the theater department yet. She _thought_ he had said something about having to get a science degree first and then a teaching degree after that, but she might have remembered wrong.

"Maybe you can make sure to make the next meeting and ask him," Tikki suggested. "You'll be able to make it, right?"

Marinette thought about it. "I think so? With this show done, I won't _need_ to stay so late to catch all of the rehearsal until the fittings and dress rehearsals for Mary Poppins hit. As long as I don't have a test the next day, I'll go out."

Tikki spun around excitedly. "Yay! Then you can ask Adrien what he's been up to, and how his degree is going, and-"

"And I can talk to my other friends, too," Marinette pointed out, giggling a little bit. "Even if I _do_ text Alya and Nino more often. Now, why don't you plug my iPod into the speakers and put on some music?" Marinette asked. She pointed towards her bag. "Everything _should_ be on top, since I knew I would want to have them tonight. I'll be here for a while."

Tikki nodded eagerly, pulling out the iPod and cords and hooking them up to the small speaker that Marinette had set up on the desk. She scrolled through Marinette's songs for a moment before putting it on shuffle. Seconds later, music poured through the speakers, and Marinette and Tikki joined in.

" _Chim chiminey, chim chiminey, chim chim cher-ee, a_ _sweep is as lucky as lucky can be!_ _Chim chiminey, chim chiminey, chim chim cher-oo, g_ _ood luck will rub off when I shakes hands with you!_ _Or blow me a kiss- a_ _nd that's lucky too!"_


	4. Chapter 4

"She's singing new songs. Her old show is over," Adrien told Max as soon as he saw the other boy again, a week after they last talked. It had been a long week, with more singing than usual. His soulmate hadn't stuck to just songs from musicals, but there was a definite pattern that had emerged. "Mary Poppins this time."

"Well, that means I can strike off any new shows," Max said, peering down at his spreadsheet. It was currently at two pages long and was completely confusing, but apparently Max could understand it. "We should be able to figure out which company your soulmate is in- or what university program she's in, I guess- and then we can get to one of their shows. Not all actors sing all songs, so that should help us narrow things down a bit to figure out who your soulmate is."

Adrien frowned as he thought about what songs his soulmate had sung. "Wasn't she singing all of the songs in the last musical, though?"

Max blinked and consulted his notes. He didn't let the new information throw him for long. "She may have been playing multiple parts or have been part of the choir."

"And her singing didn't line up very well with the show times," Adrien noted. His soulmate hadn't sung at all during the Paris university show, and only a couple times during the other show times. It was weird, and it made him question Max's methods just a bit.

He wasn't ever going to tell Max that, though. Adrien needed his help too much to risk offending him.

"Perhaps she's an understudy?" Max suggested. "She would have to know all of the songs but wouldn't be singing during the actual show unless she was needed."

Adrien groaned, barely resisting the urge to bang his head against the desk. He'd assumed that his soulmate was one of the actors out on stage. They had based their entire plan around that assumption, and Adrien wasn't sure how that plan would change if she continued to work as an understudy.

He would just have to hope that she would actually perform during the show in Mary Poppins.

"How are things going otherwise?" Max asked. "I just realized that all we ever talk about is your soulmate and while it's certainly a fascinating subject of conversation, I'm sure you have other things going on."

"Not much, since I can't really go out much, in case I start singing." Adrien thought back to the last time he had managed to get together with Nino and Alya, when his soulmate got on such a singing kick that they got booted out of the cafe they had gone to. Nino and Alya had found it hilarious, even joining Adrien in singing as they headed to Nino's family's apartment to spend the rest of the evening, but for Adrien it had been a reminder why he had to limit his outings. "I've had to start thinking about what classes I want to take next semester, which isn't going too well. There are a few things I'll have to attend in person, and there's no way to get out of them."

Max winced. "So we have a bit of a deadline, then? To find your soulmate by the end of the semester?"

"That would be nice, if it's possible." And yet again they had come right back around to the topic of his soulmate connection. It just showed how completely it was influencing his life. "But I've been paying attention to when I sing. It was mostly to plan when I could most likely do photoshoots without being interrupted, but it'll work for picking out what lab sections I take, too."

"To run the lowest risk of interruption," Max filled in, nodding. "Yes, that is quite smart. So what times-?"

It was Adrien's turn to wince. "Well, she doesn't like getting up early, I think," he admitted. Unfortunately, he also wasn't terribly fond of early morning wake-ups, but it was all he had to work with. "So all of the eight o'clock and nine o'clocks, basically."

Max patted him on the arm sympathetically. "Well, at least you'll be up and ready to go for the day?"

Adrien groaned, burying his face in his arms. "Yeah, sure, that would be fine if that was all I had to do- but if my father catches on that I chose those times because my soulmate won't be singing, then he'll have me up to do photoshoots _crazy_ early nearly every day- and can you say _sunrise shoot commercials_ instead of the sunset ones? I don't want to get up that early!"

"We'll find your soulmate," Max promised seriously. "We'll have to wait until her show runs, of course, but I'd say that the chances of us being successful are _very_ high."

That put a grin on Adrien's face. "Well, I hope you're right," he told Max. "So, do you want to play some Mega Strike while you're here?"

"Sure!"

* * *

Adrien grinned when he spotted Marinette coming in through the front door of Alya's family's apartment. It had been too long since he had seen his friend, and he was eager to hear about how she was doing with her fashion degree.

"Sorry I've missed so many get-togethers," Marinette told them as she headed for the table. She exchanged hugs with Nino and Alya, and Adrien hopped up to get his own hug. Marinette's voice came out muffled as she talked into his chest. "It's just that work was going late recently."

"But it'll be back to normal for a bit now, right?" Nino asked as Adrien released Marinette from the hug. "You won't be working so late?"

"I won't have to, yeah." Marinette grinned, flopping down into an empty chair. "Which is good, since I have my own stuff I have to do for classes. I have three design sketches I have to clean up for one class, plus an outfit to finish sewing, and some studying for an exam, and an essay on the history of fashion in Russia, all to do before the end of next week."

Adrien let out a low whistle. "That's a lot. How close are you to finishing it all?"

"Well, I'm pretty close to done with the rough sketches, so all I have to do is figure out what I want to change," Marinette started out, pulling out her sketchbook. Adrien leaned forward to see the drawings, and- _wow_. Marinette had just grown more talented over the years, and while the designs were certainly practical, they also had a certain flair that would set them apart on the street.

He hoped that Marinette would get into men's fashion at some point, because he would _love_ to wear something she designed.

Adrien listened as Marinette explained her designs and the things she was still struggling with, and then showed off her progress on her outfit for her techniques class. The draping was nothing short of gorgeous, and Adrien told her so.

"You'll wear that after it's done and graded, right?" Adrien asked, eyes skimming the lines of the top and skirt in the pictures Marinette showed him. "It'll look amazing on you."

Marinette looked pleased. "You think so?"

"I _know_ so. Those lines will really compliment your figure." Not that much anything that was made well and thoughtfully _wouldn't,_ since Marinette was slim and athletic, if maybe a little on the short side. But the draping _would_ be really flattering, as long as Marinette was making it in her size.

"I'll try to wear it next time we meet up," Marinette promised. "Or the time after that, if my professor takes a while to inspect and grade everything. Sometimes she's really speedy at going through things, and other times it takes _forever_."

"Okay, enough chatter," Nino cut across before Adrien could say anything else. "Marinette, you promised that we would get to make that chocolate swirl bread, and I _know_ that that takes, like _, forever_ to rise _._ So let's get started!"

They swarmed into the kitchen and, under Marinette's instruction, started stirring up the sweet bread dough. Adrien kneaded the dough, then got it back into the bowl to rise. Across the kitchen, Nino and Alya started on their dinner, chopping spinach and getting rice started, and Adrien grinned.

Maybe a night in didn't sound _that_ exciting to most people their age, but Adrien was glad that Alya and Nino had agreed to his request that they not go out in public again right away. He had told the two of them right after he arrived that he was well and truly exhausted of the soulmate talk- that was all that he ever seemed to discuss with Max, after all, and whenever he went in for a photoshoot, the first thing that the makeup artists and hair people and photographer asked him about was whether or not his soulmate had been active recently. As long as his soulmate didn't sing throughout the evening, maybe he could have a bit of a break from that for a change.

"So besides being busy, how's the job going, Marinette?" Alya asked after Nino finished telling them about some new music mixes he had done recently. "Are you enjoying it?"

"Most of the time, yeah," Marinette said, She had gotten the bread covered for its first rise and had joined Adrien in making a fruit salad for them to eat. "It's a lot of sewing and a lot of making sure everything stays organized, just like with last year. I've gotten the storage closets in _much_ better shape than they were before, so everything is really easy to find."

"Oh, I remember you complaining about those before," Alya said, nodding. "The previous person wasn't very good at their job, were they?"

"The problem was that they just had random people putting things back before," Marinette explained. "And they would just stick stuff wherever there was space. But now it's easier to find stuff. The only problem is that I can't remember what's in there, just because there's so _many_ different outfits."

Adrien listened, wracking his brain to try to remember if he had ever asked where Marinette worked. He _really_ couldn't remember, and that was embarrassing. Even if he only infrequently saw Marinette now that their schedules seemed to conflict so much, she _was_ one of his best friends and where she worked _should_ have been something that he knew off of the top of his head, _especially_ since she had been at the same place for over a year.

He wasn't going to ask her and admit that he had forgotten. Adrien made a mental note to ask Nino later, when the girls were distracted.

Even without knowing where Marinette worked, Adrien could get a pretty good picture of what she was doing. Somehow she must have managed to skip over a typical coffee-carrying internship to get a job in the sewing room and in the archives storage- or maybe she was working on organizing things behind the scenes in photoshoots, and was keeping the props room organized. He knew that his photographer often complained about the state of the _Gabriel_ prop room, saying that it was impossible to find anything among the mountains of _stuff_ that had accumulated over the years.

(Adrien had looked in there once, when a photoshoot in the building had been delayed due to a wardrobe malfunction and he had to kill some time. Younger him had gotten it into his head that maybe, if he did something about that particular problem, he would actually get some praise from his father.

He had taken one look into the room and the towering mountains of stuff and promptly decided that there was no way he was ever going to go _anywhere_ near it. The shelves looked like they were either going to fall over or cause a landslide at any moment, and the other piles of stuff was no better. There had been signs of a recent topple only a few meters in. How anything found _anything_ in there was beyond him.)

If that was indeed what Marinette had been organizing at her job, if it was _anywhere_ as bad as _Gabriel_ 's, then Adrien had to hope that there had been someone keeping an eye on Marinette in case anything fell on her.

When their dinner went in the oven, Marinette returned to the bread to punch it back down, divide it, and roll it out. Adrien joined her, spreading the rounds with the chocolate spread that Marinette had brought with her. He was generous with the chocolate, and the small smile dancing around the corners of Marinette's mouth told him that it hadn't going unnoticed.

Adrien liked chocolate, so sue him. He would just go out on a run as Chat Noir tonight and work it all right back off, so it didn't matter what he ate.

"How is your degree going?" Marinette asked as they started to put the layers together. She adjusted a layer so it would line up more evenly, then gestured for Adrien to cover it in chocolate. "I just realized recently that I haven't heard about that in forever."

"It's going," Adrien said ruefully, spreading a generous amount of chocolate over the dough. "Still online, at the moment. I'm learning interesting stuff, but it's a lot of theories to memorize. Theories and biological processes and chemicals with strange names and..." He let out a long breath. "It's a lot. And since I'm doing everything online at the moment, I've been putting off all of my lab classes and whatnot, which is going to be a _pain_ later." It was going to leave him with a huge load of courses in the later part of his degree, and if he didn't find his soulmate, then everything would have to be done right away in the morning. He was considering taking some courses over the summer just to spread them out a little bit more, but that would depend on how well the next semester went. "But I'm not having any trouble with understanding things, which is nice. It was something I worried about when I started taking the courses online."

"Well, you've always been smart." Marinette grinned over at him, and Adrien relished in the praise. "I'm not surprised that you would be able to adapt to other ways of learning."

"It's not as fun," Adrien admitted. "I hear these two talking about the friends they've made in their classes all the time, but it's hard to meet people online. I'll have a few things where I'll have to go in in-person next semester, though."

"Oh, nice!"

Adrien hummed a sort of agreement, wondering if perhaps Marinette hadn't heard how much trouble his soulmate bond had been giving him as of late. Maybe she thought that it was still like it had been at first, with only a few scattered songs now and then. Alya and Nino must not have told her about how their last get-together was interrupted.

He wasn't going to bring it up, not today. Not when he had had to push his lunch break off for three hours because his soulmate's singing had put them behind schedule and the manager for the photoshoot had insisted that everyone else take their break while he was still singing and unable to eat. Not when he had had enough talking about the bond.

"Dude, put in a little chocolate, will you?" Nino exclaimed, peering over Adrien's shoulder. "You know that you don't have to pile it on for us to taste it, right?"

Adrien grinned. "Yeah, but more chocolate is always good. And I need chocolate, with the marathon fittings I have tomorrow."

"I would have thought that you would want to have _less_ chocolate, then, if you have a fitting!"

Adrien finished spreading on the last layer of the chocolate, then licked the knife off while holding eye contact with an amused Nino. Once it was clean, Adrien placed it back down on the counter. "Nope."

"Let the boy have his chocolate, Nino," Alya ordered jokingly. "And I approve of that amount of chocolate, by the way. It looks _fabulous_. I can't wait to eat it."

Adrien had to agree.

* * *

Despite her worries, Marinette finished her assignments with plenty of time and aced her midterm exam easily. With those out of the way, she threw herself into the second half of the semester and into her work in the theater. She got to meet up with her friends a few times, too, which she enjoyed while she could. She knew that once it got closer to the end of the semester, she would once again find herself with absolutely no free time.

But for now, everything was good, and Marinette could afford to relax a bit as she worked, adding trim to a dress for _Mary Poppins_. She could hear the rehearsal going on up on the stage from her backstage sewing area, bits of dialogue and the occasional song drifting back.

While the cast _definitely_ weren't ready by any means- after all, the roles _had_ only just been cast and rehearsals had only just started- she could already hear things starting to really improve, lines delivered with more emotion and conviction now that they weren't reading off of the scripts quite as much as they had at the start. Some of the actors were out on stage, while others- the understudies, and the main actors that weren't in the current scene- had split up, working through their scenes out in the hallway and in the nearby classrooms.

The cast weren't the only people there. Several people from other departments had been brought in to work on the special effects that were needed for some of the scenes. They already were hard at work with a projector and a screen, which would replace some of the painted sets for when the scenery had to change faster than the sets could be switched. From what Marinette could tell, they would project from _behind_ the screen and the picture would show up bright so the audience could see it. There were still some bugs, of course- even though they had been brainstorming and working on their special effects even before the show was cast, the timing still had to be perfected and they had to find exactly where the projector had to be for the least distortion and brightest picture.

One of the special effects people had already shown Marinette what they had in store, and it was absolutely _amazing_ , magical and spectacular and enough to entrance any kids that they got in the audience.

Of course, the play was a little _less_ interesting in terms of costumes. There was very little _design_ that Marinette could actually do, since the play took place in a very specific time period and she had to stick to that aesthetic. Marinette had been plagued by visions of having to make endless boring dresses and suits for an entire weekend before she dove into the costume closet and found plenty of outfits that would work perfectly for the play. Some would need altering, others would need mending, and a couple could do with some sprucing up, replacing trim and lace that had faded and discolored over time. She could add a bit of her own flair there, replacing dowdy lace with some that was actually attractive and making some other switches.

Not _too_ much, though. She had to keep in mind how people dressed. This was a play, not a runway show, and most of the characters weren't exactly crazy rich and on the edge of fashion at the time. She could take some liberties with Madam Banks' costume, of course, and with the outfits for the fair scene, but otherwise?

Blah. Good-looking blah, but blah. She was a seamstress for this job more often than she was a designer, but she wasn't going to let that affect her enjoyment of the job.

"Are you already almost done with the outfits, Marinette?" Tikki asked in amazement as she watched Marinette finish attaching the trim and set the dress aside. "Wow! You'll have _loads_ of extra time this time around!"

"Not exactly, Tikki," Marinette said with a laugh. "I need to make Jane and Michael's outfits, and once I assign dresses and suits, I'll have to do little alterations. There might be some drapes for the set, and then I might end up being recruited to help with scenery painting. And there's always other plays going on in the other stages that might need me to do some work on outfits for them."

"Or maybe you'll be doing special effects!" Tikki suggested excitedly. "Because you've made cool stuff like that before, right?"

"I don't even know where I would start with that," Marinette said with a laugh as she hung up the dress and rearranged the rack. "Besides, we have actual engineering students working on those things. No, if I have extra time, then I'll work on getting a good floor map of the storage rooms made so that I won't have to dig through everything in the future to find what I need. But only if other people can't use my help. And if I don't have any schoolwork that needs to get done."

Tikki giggled. "So organization is the last thing on your list?"

" _Ugh_. I know I did most of the work on that last year, but I'm _still_ sick of it."

The little kwami only giggled harder.

As the director out on stage called for a scene re-start, Marinette returned her attention to the racks of outfits around her and the clipboard that Miss Bella had provided with all of the outfits needed. She started checking outfits off, counting dresses and suits and making notes on those that still needed some work before they could be used. There were enough outfits and then some- enough that in case something happened to one of the outfits, there would be backups.

"And now you label them, right?" Tikki asked as Marinette checked the last of the dresses. "So you know which of the pieces you're going to fit to each performer?"

"Right!" Marinette returned to her desk and started drawing out labels, cross-checking clothing sizes of the actors and actresses with what she had available and starting to scribble names on the labels. "Then I can start pulling people in here for fittings as soon as I get the last of the repairs done. We'll get more permanent labels on later on, ones that won't rip off as easily."

"I can make some!" Tikki volunteered, swooping down and grabbing a short bit of pencil. She paused, looking uncertain. "Uh..."

Marinette giggled. "I think I need to figure all of these out on my own. But could you go grab a few more pieces of paper from the first drawer in my desk? I don't think I have enough here."

While Tikki zipped off to grab more slips of paper, Marinette gathered up the labels she had so far and strapped her pincushion on her wrist, getting up to start putting them on the outfits she had assigned so far. If she could get those set aside, then it would be easier to see what all she had left to work with.

Outside the door, a prerecorded backing track started up and voices floated through the door as the cast started to sing. Marinette perked up and started to sing along as she pinned the labels to dresses and suits hanging on the rack, feeling more cheerful than she had even only moments before.

" _Oh, it's a jolly holiday with Mary..._ "

* * *

 _A/N: I just want to quickly mention that there is a possibility that updates might hop off schedule more frequently for a bit. I'm going to be starting my fall job soon and while there's internet in our living area, I know from experience that wildlife jobs (and spending time with coworkers) tends to eat up way more time than I thought it would and that can mean not enough time to post stuff. Maybe it won't this time (after all, every job is different), but just in case._

 _Also, on a more story-related note: in case it wasn't clear, Adrien didn't attend any performances this time around. It wasn't really possible to narrow down what performances his soulmate was associated with just from one show, especially when the singing didn't line up. Adrien will start searching more actively with the second show, though :)_


	5. Chapter 5

Adrien winced as he ran his hand through his hair. The spray that his stylist had used to keep his hair in place despite the sometimes gusty wind had resulted in hair that felt rather like a helmet, even if it _looked_ very stylish still, and he couldn't wait to wash it all out.

"Well, at least that didn't go over time," Plagg offered as Adrien closed his door behind him. "You ended early, even- no?"

Adrien was shaking his head. "Nathalie has started adding an hour to all of my photoshoots to make sure that the photographers and other models and staff don't charge overtime just because we got interrupted. But yeah, at least it was only part of one song today." It wasn't the worst photoshoot he had done, not by far. It had just been exhausting, and sitting outside and trying _not_ to look chilled in the late fall air wasn't easy. He had makeup coating his ears and cheeks to hide the red from the wind's chill, and that was just as uncomfortable as the cold itself. "I'm gonna go shower and get all of the gunk off. You know where the cheese is."

"We're getting low!" Plagg called as Adrien gathered up a change of clothes and headed into the bathroom. "Can we go to the cheese market soon? We haven't been in ages!"

They hadn't been since Adrien's soulmate bond showed up, he meant. Adrien thought about it. "If we can go early. My soulmate won't be up then. Hopefully."

Plagg cheered loudly.

Adrien shut the bathroom door, heading over to the sink and starting to scrub the layers of makeup off. His cheeks were red from the rubbing, even with the makeup remover on his washcloth.

The makeup artists had _really_ caked it on thick this time.

By the time Adrien had gotten the last streaks of his photoshoot makeup off and got the shower running, he was already feeling better. When the familiar tickle in his throat appeared, Adrien only grinned and started singing along whole-heartedly, even using his shampoo bottle as a microphone as he stepped under the shower head.

It was one of the only times when he could truly enjoy his soulmate bond, when he was at home and not trying to get anything done. His soulmate knew quite a few songs, most quite energetic and fun, and he didn't have to try to think about the words at all. They just flowed out, easy and free.

Adrien supposed that it was a good thing that he wasn't a half-bad singer. Sure, he would never grace CD racks or anything, but he wasn't anywhere _close_ to the yowling cat that his Lady sometimes joked he was.

(She hadn't actually heard him sing anytime recently, actually. She couldn't judge him on his fifteen-year-old self's singing skills.)

His soulmate swung from an upbeat, peppy song to a slower one, powerful and sweet. Adrien tipped his head back to rinse the shampoo out of his hair and belted out the words, careful to not get any soap in his mouth.

" _And just for this moment, As long as you're mine, I've lost all resistance-"_

The rest of his shower went by in a flash, and then Adrien was toweling himself off and tugging on fresh clothes, ones that hadn't been tossed over the back of a metal folding chair in the change tent for part of the day and then knocked onto the ground for the rest of the photoshoot. His hair got a quick toweling of and brushing out, and then Adrien shoved it back away from his face instead of styling it.

He wasn't going to be going out for the rest of the day, after all. His father might give him some sidelong looks, but that was fine. Adrien wasn't going to pay him any mind.

"Oh god, the soundtrack's started," Plagg grumbled as Adrien came out, still singing. " _Really?_ You look like a dork, holding your hairbrush like that."

"- _helps the medicine go down, the medicine go down! Oh, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, in the most delightful way!"_

"There's no medicine in the world that is _delightful_ ," Plagg informed Adrien helpfully. "It's gross, all of it. I've had Chosens try to give me their nasty human medicine when I get sick. Don't ever try it, or I'll bite you."

Adrien ignored Plagg, heading over to his computer to pull out his books to do a few Chemistry problems and singing all the while. He didn't have to think about the songs at all as he sang, so it really wasn't that distracting as he worked out the chemical equations. In fact, it was actually rather enjoyable.

Even if he hadn't met his soulmate yet, Adrien always felt closer to her when he could sing along properly like this. He often felt a bit bad about grumbling and sighing over his soulmate bond, especially with as frequently as he complained about it and tried his best to resist the singing. When he resisted so much, Adrien often felt like he was, in some way, _rejecting_ his soulmate.

And he wasn't. He didn't want to. After so long thinking that he would spend his life alone and lonely, without someone who just _got_ him, Adrien was glad that he had a soulmate. It was just that he would have preferred a different kind of mark to show his bond, something that would allow him to go about his day a little more normally.

But his bond would allow him to track down his soulmate while things like simple matching marks and timers didn't. As long as Max's methods could produce results, Adrien _should_ be able to locate his soulmate before much longer.

Humming now- apparently his soulmate had settled down a bit, and good thing too as Adrien's throat was starting to feel a tad sore- Adrien finished up his Chemistry homework, then settled down with a reading for his Plant Bio course. He shot a text off to Nathalie letting her know that he would take dinner in his room, as his father would complain if Adrien were to start singing again if he were in the dining room, and then went back to his coursework.

If his soulmate properly stopped singing later, he would try to watch a few recorded lectures and get a bit ahead of the syllabus. If his soulmate followed her patterns from previous semesters, she would start singing more again towards the end of the semester. Now that Adrien knew- or, well, suspected- that she was at a university theater, that made sense. Two musicals per semester, and performers would logically be practicing more when they were right about to start their performances. That made things a little inconvenient for Adrien, unless he planned ahead.

And since Adrien wanted to minimize any resentment towards his soulmate bond getting in his way, he would work around it and adapt.

* * *

"Hey, Alya!"

Alya grinned at Marinette as she slid into the seat next to her in the cozy diner they had chosen to meet at. "Hey, girl. Nino said sorry he couldn't make it, but he's got class to go to."

Marinette made a face. " _Ugh_. Class this early? No thanks. I didn't even want to get up this time. But there's a sale at the fabric shop today, and I had to swing by before and I wanted to get in and buy some things I need before supplies went." She patted the bulging bags sitting on the floor by her feet. "This'll be fun to work with. And I restocked my threads, and my needles, and zippers and buttons and-"

"Your whole sewing kit then, basically." Alya snagged the menu from Marinette and scanned it. "I bet your parents were surprised to see you up so early."

Marinette giggled, remembering her mother's face when she saw Marinette barreling down the stairs over two hours before she normally got up. "She wanted to know if there was a fire upstairs or something. And I _did_ tell them about the sale yesterday, but apparently they forgot."

"Is anything in there for the theater?" Alya wanted to know as she flagged down a waitress. "Or do you not need anything for Mary Poppins?"

Marinette shook her head. "All of the costumes have been made, and all of the sewing for the sets got finished, too. And the school pays for all of those supplies, so it doesn't really matter as much when I buy stuff."

"So what do you do when there's no more work on the costumes to do?" Alya wanted to know. "I'd like the pancakes and eggs, please, and a glass of orange juice, please," she added to the waitress.

"I'll have the same," Marinette said, smiling at the waitress. The woman nodded and headed back towards the kitchen. "I keep the outfits organized, because if it were up to the cast, things would just get hung up whenever at the end of performances and dress rehearsals," she told Alya. "And there's other plays going on that _aren't_ musicals, that's just what I tend to spend most of my time on, since they're so big. I just finished altering some things for a blackbox play, and I've got to do some repairs on the outfits that I just got back from another play, because they got stretched and torn a bit. I get them cleaned before they get put away, too."

"Mending and laundry. Yeah, I really see why you stay at that job." Alya gave Marinette a long look. "I get that it pays, but _really_. When was the last time that you made an entirely new outfit for the theater?"

" _Little Shop of Horrors_ ," Marinette answered promptly. "We didn't exactly have a giant plant costume sitting around. And some of the costumes needed some major alterations."

Alya groaned. "You _know_ that isn't what I meant. When have you _designed_ anything? You're too good to just be a seamstress for a university theater department."

"I'm thinking of getting a part-time internship with a design house this summer," Marinette said with a sigh. She had been thinking about it more often recently as her professors stressed the importance of getting a foot in the door to the fashion world, even though she still had a couple months before she would be able to apply to anything. "Since the theater thing only takes a few hours each day most of the time. Then I would get a foot in there, but I could keep the good hours from the theater during the school year."

That only made Alya look more exasperated. "I'm sure you could find an internship that would work around your classes. _Mine_ does."

"That's not what other students have found," Marinette said firmly. She knew Alya had her best interests in mind, she really did, but Alya hadn't looked through the postings for jobs and talked to the older design students. "And I enjoy my job. I'm not going to leave it."

"If you're sure." Alya leaned over, poking through Marinette's bag. She made an appreciative noise when she found the length of red silk that Marinette had bought. "Ooh, this is pretty."

Marinette grinned, thinking of the dress and flared pants she was planning on making with that particular fabric. She was going to do a few black accents on it, a subtle reference to her Ladybug colors without doing the spots like so many other people did. She probably wouldn't get around to making it for a bit- after all, she had things she needed to do for her classes and also for her job that came first- but she had the designs all drawn out and the measurements made.

"And _velvet!"_ Alya exclaimed, still digging. "And- oh, this is pretty. Your colors are always great."

"Well, I _am_ a designer. I have to have an eye for color." Marinette watched as Alya pulled a rainbow of fabrics out of her bag, _ooh_ ing over each one. There was a ton of fabric, enough that the other customers were giving them odd looks, but Marinette knew that she would end up using most of those fabrics up in the next couple of months. It was just part of being a fashion student.

She had gotten spectacular deals on each and every one of those lengths, good enough to make her want to spontaneously burst out into song in joy. Since she had had no desire to get booted out of the fabric store, she had contented herself with humming merrily as she picked out fabrics and loaded them into her cart.

Alya just shook her head. "It's not just the designer thing. I've seen some so-called _fashion_ students gasping over the ugliest colors in the store and making up designs with fabrics that _I_ thought belonged in the trash. They clearly have no idea what actually looks good."

Marinette hastily muffled a laugh. As much as she was loath to admit it, just because she hated to speak ill about another person's art, Alya had a point. Some of her classmates were so focused on making something unique and never seen before that they lost sight of what actually looked _good_. She personally preferred to balance new and timeless style, comfort and fashion.

"Oh, is that who I think it is?" Alya asked, cutting across Marinette's musings. She pointed across the cafe at the blond man who had just entered. Marinette squinted and- yup, Alya was right, it _was_ Adrien. Alya waved, catching his attention. "Adrien! Over here!"

Adrien looked startled, but he only hesitated for a second before heading over to their table. Marinette was surprised to see that Adrien didn't look as cheerful as he normally did, though he tried for a smile as he stopped by their table.

"Hey, you two," Adrien greeted them. Even though Marinette had cleared space on the seat next to her for him, he didn't sit down. "I didn't expect to see you guys here!"

"And you would never expect to see Marinette this early, right?" Without waiting for an answer, Alya soldiered on. "And don't just _stand_ there, Adrien, sit down! Don't be a stranger. Or do you have somewhere to be?"

Adrien sat, placing his bag on the seat next to him. He didn't look comfortable.

"I was showing Alya some of the stuff I bought at the fabric store this morning," Marinette explained as she slid fabric back into the bag. She paused to let Adrien feel the silk before tucking it away as well. "There was a sale."

That got a laugh out of Adrien. "Oh, is that why you're up? I thought we normally wouldn't see you for another couple hours."

Marinette spluttered. "I- oh, that's not _nice_. I'd normally be getting up soon, not in _a couple hour_ s. _"_

Adrien grinned at her. "Oh, we know. I was just teasing." He leaned over to hug Marinette, pressing her into his side. "We wouldn't be seeing you out and about for a couple hours, then. Not unless you had something to get to, at least."

"Speaking of seeing people, we weren't expecting to see you here," Alya told Adrien. The waitress returned with their drinks, and Alya accepted hers with a thanks. "I thought you weren't really going out much these days?"

"I was going to get a box to-go, honestly. I just wanted to get out of the house." Adrien flipped through the menu that the waitress had handed him. "Though I suppose I could have just asked our chef for a box, too, and had a picnic of sorts somewhere. I just didn't think of it."

"Well, now you have somewhere to sit while you eat." Marinette took a sip of her juice and then pushed it over so Adrien could have some. " _And_ people to talk to."

Adrien was still looking a bit uncomfortable for some reason, and Marinette wondered if he had actually been on his way somewhere and just didn't want to talk about it. She tried to subtly glance at his wrists- maybe his soulmate mark was a timer, and that was why he had snuck out- but no, Adrien's wrists were clearly bare, devoid of any marks. Clearly whatever had gotten him out of the house was some other reason entirely.

"Do you have designs to go with that fabric?" Adrien asked after he had placed his order and assured the waitress that no, no one else would be joining them. "You must, right?"

Marinette grinned and nodded, pulling out her sketchbook. "Yeah! Some are still going through revisions, of course, but I have them nailed down enough to have rough yardage figured out." She flipped the sketchbook open and pushed it over towards Adrien. "That's what I have planned."

She watched as Adrien flipped through the pages, giving each design a careful look-over, reading her notes and tracing over some of the lines lightly with his finger. Out of all of her old friends, Adrien was the one who gave her designs the closest looks and gave her the most constructive feedback. He looked at the designs as more than just a pretty picture, looking at the design as a fashion piece as well. Even if fashion wasn't his field of study, Adrien had been exposed to it enough over the years to develop a pretty good eye.

"This are going to look amazing, Marinette," Adrien said after a minute. He didn't look as excited as he normally did when looking at her designs, but Marinette wasn't going to take that personally. It was obvious that he was having an off day. "Just like always. There's some new techniques you're using, aren't there?"

Marinette grinned, impressed that he had noticed. "Yeah! I learned them in my techniques class and I immediately got some ideas of what to make. I probably won't be able to make much anything for myself until the semester has ended, but it doesn't hurt to be prepared."

It didn't take long for their breakfast to be delivered, with Adrien's arriving at the same time despite his order being put in a bit later. He ate quickly, leaving money for his meal before taking off with a wave.

Alya didn't look surprised, but Marinette was super-confused. The Adrien she knew spent as much time as he could with his friends, even occasionally risking his father's wrath to eke out a few more minutes together with them. But Adrien seemed uncomfortable while out in public, a far cry from when they had hung out together at Alya's apartment.

Had there been some sort of incident with his fans during one of the get-togethers that she had missed during the _Little House of Horrors_ run? Marinette had thought that people had backed off a bit after Mr. Agreste had sent a lawyer after one particularly aggressive fan, but there was always the occasional person who was willing to brave both the former supervillain and all of the security that he had just to get a bit closer to Adrien.

If she had been as into him as she had been when she was younger, Marinette would have surely heard about whatever had happened by now. But it had been _years_ since Marinette looked up articles and videos about Adrien, mostly because it felt like invading his privacy.

Besides, the articles weren't very accurate. Adrien was a fairly private person, keeping his public social media profiles minimalistic, with only information about his upcoming modeling events or _Gabriel_ lines posted. The tabloids had to guess and make things up for most of their articles and, well...

They weren't very accurate. Clearly the reporters had never actually talked to him in person.

"So, back to what we were talking about before," Alya said, cutting across Marinette's thoughts- maybe she _should_ search Adrien's name again, just to check- "Your new show is gonna run in a few weeks, right? Is it any good?"

"Are you kidding? It's _fantastic_." Fully distracted, Marinette's attention returned fully to Alya. "You should come watch one of the shows. We've got some great child actors in it without our normal cast. They're surprisingly good at singing, considering how young they are."

Alya barked out a laugh. "Wow, such persuasive powers you have there. All right, all right. If I'm free one of those nights, I'll go. I might not be, though," she warned. "That's gonna be a busy time for my internship, too."

"That's what you _always_ say." Still, Marinette wasn't too bothered. Alya had never really been into plays, so it was no big surprise that she might not come and see the show. "I'll believe it when I see it."

Alya laughed. "Okay, okay, I'll _try_. I promise."

* * *

 _A/N: I got to actually start banding today and I GOT TO HOLD A HUMMINGBIRD. I also got to band several cardinals and a goldfinch (and got bit in the process of doing one of the cardinals. There is a reason I like the warblers better, and it's called the biting doesn't hurt that much).  
_

 _(Also in case anyone was wondering- yes, the cheese market adventure and Marinette's fabric sale trip were going on at the same time. Adrien was just totally lying when he said that he just wanted to get out of the house for breakfast, because he didn't want to talk about the soulmate stuff again.)_


	6. Chapter 6

_A/N: So I don't know if I ever made it explicitly clear, but since I've been getting some questions about it: yes, the musical bond extends to humming. Yes, this is very unfortunate for Adrien._

 _Also, since I've gotten comments asking about how much Nino and Alya know/suspect and I'm not sure if it ever gets expressed in the story itself: everyone in this story is an idiot. They know that she works in a theater that does musicals, but since she's never really sung in front of them, they assume that she doesn't sing. Or, rather, they just don't think about it, but if they did they would assume that she doesn't sing._

 _ **ALSO**. I am so, so sorry about the delay in posting. I have a 6-year-old computer that is starting to break down a bit, and on the first of the month the cooling fan COMPLETELY gave out. I couldn't have the computer on for five minutes before it got dangerously hot. I had to bring it in to a computer store, where they gave me the bad news (...Google had told me that blowing out the fan area should fix it. Google lied.). They ordered a replacement part, the parts people sent the wrong model part, they had to express order the right part, and I JUST got my computer back today. Not having it was slowly killing me, so I'm VERY glad to have it fixed. Trying to type on my phone was...not great. For those of you wondering, HTFAM will update on the 17th as to resume my pattern of updating something every three days._

 _Anyway- on to the story! :)_

* * *

Adrien had not been in a particularly good mood for... well, a while. His soulmate had been singing more than usual as the semester started to draw to a close, resulting in a whole slew of canceled engagements on his end. There had been some that he hadn't been looking forward to that much- stuffy business meetings with the self-important company investors, mostly- but Adrien _had_ been looking forward to some of the others.

Mostly because he was tired of being cooped up in the house with only Plagg for company most of the time, if he was being honest. Had he been allowed to skip those very same events only a few years prior, Adrien probably would have cheered just because those "parties" weren't particularly interesting.

But at least they weren't set in his room. Adrien was tired of seeing the same four walls around him, day in and day out.

Thankfully, there was a spot of hope on the horizon. Adrien was still working with Max to figure out where his soulmate was performing, so he could maybe find her before the end of the semester. Hopefully in only a few short weeks, Adrien would get to celebrate the holidays with his soulmate at his side and with his friends around him.

Adrien was stuck mid-daydream about it- his soulmate would become instant friends with all of his friends, obviously, because Alya and Nino and Marinette were all so friendly and _surely_ his soulmate would be as well, and then they would all celebrate the holidays into the night and share stories of their school years- when the buzzing of his phone startled him. Adrien scrambled for a moment, trying to figure out where he had put it. Plagg groaned loudly at his nap being interrupted, shoving the vibrating phone out from under a book at Adrien and promptly curling back up to go to sleep.

"I found it!" Max announced as soon as Adrien picked up the phone, accepting the video call. "The place where your soulmate is, I mean. Your soulmate is attending the university in Paris that we were looking at before. They're doing a production of Mary Poppins in a month, and they did Little Shop of Horrors earlier in the year, right when your soulmate was singing those songs."

Adrien perked up, pushing his Physics textbook away so he could give Max his undivided attention. "That's perfect! Should I call them to try to figure out what I should sit so I'm not disrupting the performance?"

"I already did. They had two suggestions." Max adjusted his glasses, pushing them up on his nose as he looked at his papers. "Option 1: Come on the audience sing-along night. Problem: The understudies are more likely to also be singing along, and the audience members would as well. You may have some difficulty figuring out who your soulmate is. I think that actors not involved in the scene might also join the audience in singing, even in songs they aren't in."

Adrien made a face. That sounded like _far_ too many variables. Besides, what if Max was wrong and he burst out in song at the wrong time? "The other option?"

"Option 2: the lighting and sound booth. It's soundproof, and there would be one light tech and one sound person there, and they probably wouldn't be bothered by any impromptu duets."

The suggestion had Adrien grinning. "I like the sound of that."

"I also believe that that would be the best option. You would have arrive early, so people don't see you going in and complain about preferential treatment."

Adrien nodded. He had had to deal with people thinking that he got where he was due to his father far too often and while people _did_ have a point when it came to his modelling, other times it was just unfair. He'd prefer to have to explain his situation to as few people as possible.

"It's been a while since I've been to a play," Plagg said once Adrien finished hashing out the details with Max and had hung up. "Is it a good one?"

"I think so," Adrien said, turning to his computer and searching the university. A few clicks, and he navigated to the page for the theater department. A colorful photo filled most of the page, an announcement about the musical and the run dates printed across the bottom. Adrien's eager eyes scanned the photo, wondering if one of the people pictured was his soulmate. It was mostly just featuring the main characters, though, so maybe not. He hoped that he would know soon enough. "If _she's_ doing it, then it's _definitely_ got to be good."

Plagg sniffed. "You haven't even met the girl and you're already a lovesick kitten. Pathetic."

"I'm just excited!" Adrien defended himself, already planning his outfit for his theater outing in his head. "What do you think she'll look like? I don't know anything about her, really, besides where she goes to school, and the fact that she likes musicals. And that she's a theater major, I suppose."

Plagg sniggered, clearly abandoning his nap in favor of bothering Adrien. "Maybe she has blue eyes and black hair. We all know that's your type, after all."

Adrien felt his cheeks flood with color. "I don't know what you're talking about."

The cackles from Plagg were louder now. "Uh-huh. _Sure_ you don't."

"Liking Ladybug does not give me a _type!_ " Besides, that had been _ages_ ago. Adrien had long since accepted that he and Ladybug were destined to just be friends. "Just because _she_ has blue eyes and dark hair doesn't mean that I automatically have a type."

"Uh-huh. And what about Marinette, hmm? She has blue eyes and dark hair too!"

Despite himself, Adrien's cheeks heated up. "She's one of my _friends_." Still, even if he would never admit it, he knew Plagg had a point. Marinette was the kind of person who Adrien likely would have gone out with, had the whole soulmates thing not existed and had he not been hung up on Ladybug for years. But he had never allowed himself to let his mind wander too far down that path.

It had taken him too long to get over Ladybug and really get around to accepting that they would just stay at the level of really good friends and nothing more. Falling for someone else all over again would just set him back, and that was _not_ what he needed now, when his soulmate was so close.

Plagg just made a dismissive little noise and zipped off again. Adrien picked his phone up again and texted Nino the news, grinning as he did. Maybe his best friend could come with him to the performance as support. Nino had been dating Alya successfully for _years_ now and would doubtless have some good advice for Adrien so that he wouldn't make a _complete_ fool out of himself in front of his soulmate the first time they met.

Even though he _knew_ he was going to be a ball of nerves, Adrien couldn't wait.

* * *

Adrien arrived in the university theater a with excitement building steadily in his chest, dressed in a tidy green button-up and slacks. Once he explained his situation to the usher it didn't take long for him to get shuffled up to the lighting and sound booth, where he got parked on a chair among the mess of cords. Nino hadn't been able to come, but he _had_ texted Adrien a whole list of tips beforehand, do's and don'ts and suggested icebreakers.

He was going to make a giant fool of himself, Adrien just knew it. Even with the tips, he was likely to go overboard with things and be _ridiculously_ dramatic about it. That was just his default with he was nervous or jittery, and right now?

Adrien was _both_ nervous _and_ jittery, and very liable to start doing low bows and knuckle kisses once he met his soulmate.

"I didn't know there was such thing as a musical soulmate bond," the light tech said, already fiddling with a series of switches on a board. The sound tech, a quiet girl with glasses and a high ponytail, had retreated to her own section of the booth and closed the door between the sections without a word to Adrien. "That's cool."

"It's slightly inconvenient when I don't know when I'm going to burst out in song," Adrien admitted. Then he winced, realizing how ungrateful he was sounding about his soulmate. Anyone who didn't know exactly how much disruption the bond caused would likely jump to the wrong conclusions. He hastened to say something more positive. "When I'm at school or out in public, you know. But yeah, it's interesting and I've learned about a lot of cool musicals because of it. There's a lot of really fun songs, but I would prefer if the timing was a bit better."

Lights properly adjusted for the time being, the light tech leaned back in his own chair and glanced over at Adrien. "Oh, I had never thought about what a pain that might be. Did you get in a lot of trouble in school for singing when you were younger?"

Adrien shook his head. "It didn't start up until recently. I was maybe halfway into my first semester of university when the singing started, and I've been taking classes online ever since." He made a face. "It would be nice to get back into normal classes, though. Online isn't anywhere near as fun. I miss talking to people, and I can't really properly finish my science degree or start my Master's studies to become a teacher until I have the singing sorted out."

"Hopefully you'll be able to go back after this semester," Jason said. "And what a great holiday present, too, to find your soulmate."

Adrien's grin lit up his entire face, so wide his cheeks were hurting. "Yeah! That's what I'm hoping for. She might already have holiday plans, but I'm flexible, so maybe I could tag along with her. I've already got all of these plans for, like, dates to go on and everything. I'm just _super_ excited."

Jason laughed. "I can tell. You're practically vibrating out of your chair. I've still got three years to go," he added, flashing his wrist at Adrien. _3Y 4M_ was printed in dark ink. "I'm happy to wait, just knowing that there's someone out there for me."

Their small talk continued until the show started. Adrien sat up straight, eyes focused on the stage as he waited for the telltale tickle in his throat. His excitement mounted as the house lights dimmed and went off, and the curtains parted.

Even though Adrien was nervous, he couldn't help but enjoy the first few minutes. The orchestra started- Adrien briefly wondered how in the world they could even see their music in the dim lighting- and the jack-of-all-trades Bert appeared onstage in a lone spotlight.

Not his soulmate, obviously.

The ball of nerves mounted as one character after another sang and there wasn't so much as a tickle in his throat. Adrien squinted at his program in the dim lighting of the light booth, mentally checking off each character after they sang, trying to figure out if there was anyone left who had yet to sing. The list of possibilities was growing steadily shorter with every passing scene.

...maybe it was someone in the ensemble? Adrien's breath was starting to feel tight in his throat as cast members swarmed around the stage, changing the set before the next scene started.

He couldn't be wrong. _Max_ couldn't be wrong. This was literally their _only_ lead. No other theater in the country had put on the same combination of shows. What were they meant to do if this, their only lead, didn't turn anything up?

But the ensemble sang, and the play continued on. But Adrien was barely listening, heart sunk into his toes.

 _Nothing_. His dream of spending the holidays with his soulmate was going down the drain.

The light tech- Jason, he had told Adrien- eyed Adrien as the lights were raised for the halftime intermission. "No singing?"

Adrien shook his head morosely. "Nothing at all. We were positive that she was in this performance too, since she was singing stuff from the Little Shop of Horrors before, when you guys were doing that show."

"Understudy, then?" Jason suggested as he watched the audience filing out of the auditorium for snacks and bathroom breaks. "I'm not terribly familiar with a lot of the cast, so I don't know if there's any repeats from before." He frowned. "I thought understudies normally become part of the ensembles, though. Maybe I'm remembering things wrong."

"Has everyone sung at least once, do you know?" Adrien asked, flipping through the pages of his program. He had been marking off the main characters as they sang, but it was difficult to tell apart the background characters at times, especially from as far back as the light box. Now that the lights were on, he could look at the cast list more carefully. It still wasn't giving him any leads.

The other boy shrugged. "Probably? I don't really know the cast, sorry. I'm more familiar with the other backstage workers."

Adrien slumped in his seat as he texted both Nino and Max. He had been _so positive_ that he would find his soulmate tonight. If everyone had already sung, then where did that leave him? Where had they gone wrong?

Nino reacted with dismay. Max's text was so very typical _Max_.

 _Max: Huh. Will expand search area into other French-speaking countries and regions. Will keep you posted._

Adrien sighed and turned his attention back to the auditorium. People were starting to filter back in, trips to the bathroom done and snacks in hand. They were chatting excitedly amongst themselves, no doubt discussing the play and their favorite songs so far, or something like that. Adrien couldn't manage to even fake their level of enthusiasm, not anymore. Jason suggested that maybe there were a few members of the ensemble and understudy cast who hadn't sung yet, but Adrien couldn't bring himself to get his hopes up again. Something in his gut told him that there was no point.

An announcement sounded over the auditorium, and Jason started dimming the lights. Audience members hurried to their seats, getting fully settled before the lights went off completely. The music started up again and the second half of the play started. Even though the songs were peppy and upbeat and normally made him smile, Adrien watched it all rather listlessly. His eyes tracked the actors and actresses on stage automatically, but he was utterly unable to get past the crushing disappointment of what he had thought was a solid lead turning into an utterly dead end.

There wasn't so much as a tickle in his throat the entire time. By the time Adrien left the auditorium at the end of the show, following a cheerful crowd, it was with a heavy heart and discouragement sitting sour in his gut.


	7. Chapter 7

As always, the actual performances went by too fast, done in a blink of an eye, and then it was time to start planning for the next one, even if they wouldn't start properly working on it until the start of the spring semester.

"The Sound of Music?" Marinette asked as she tucked the last costume away into its protective plastic bag at the end of the week. She tugged the zipper up, then hung the piece up and triple-checked the label before turning to her boss. "Oh, I've heard of that one. Are we borrowing collège students again for the children?"

"Some are even younger. We're borrowing them from a children's theater, so they're all experienced. There are seven kids, from five to sixteen, but we're going to have university students for the fourteen and sixteen-year-olds at the very least. Possibly for the thirteen-year-old as well." Ms. Bella shrugged at Marinette's puzzled look. "It's just easier to keep the cast on track if we're not working with a large number of young children."

"You want a university student playing a thirteen-year-old?" Marinette asked a bit dubiously. Even with the youngest of the university students, that would be a five-year age difference. "That seems like a large gap."

"Well, the girl playing the five-year-old will be eight, we think," Ms. Bella explained. "And the others will be slightly older as well, just because it's easier to work with older kids, especially on a shorter turnaround like with what we have here. Besides, some university students can look quite young."

Marinette couldn't argue with that. Even at nineteen, she was sometimes mistaken for fourteen, especially when she wore her hair in pigtails. She had seen the kind of magic the makeup department could work as well, so it was hardly unreasonable to think that uni students could play young teenagers.

"I think a lot of the costumes we used in this show could be reused for the next one," Ms. Bella added, passing Marinette a pair of shoes that had been used during the performance so that she could box them up and put them away. "Some alterations will be needed on the dresses, of course, just so they don't look exactly the same, but the suits should just need fitting. We'll also need nun outfits, but those are pretty flowy and won't need much in the way of fitting."

Marinette hid her wince. Nun's outfits might not be very fitted, but they were a whole lot of fabric and a whole lot of hemming and long seams. She would have to comb through the closets to see if there were any preexisting costumes. Otherwise, she was in for a whole lot of sewing of simple, boring seams, which…well.

If the normal costumes presented little opportunity for Marinette to use her design training, then nun's habits provided even less.

"Keep the dresses and suits near the front of the storage room over the break," Ms. Bella continued. She rested a hand on the full-to-bursting rack of costumes. "I get the feeling that we'll be using at least some of them again in _The Sound of Music._ It's set- well, not right at the same time, but fashions were similar enough that it doesn't matter."

 _Gah_. Marinette tried not to show any reaction to her boss's words. That...wasn't exactly accurate, but she wasn't going to argue it. It wasn't as though anyone in the audience would know or would bother to look up exactly when each was set. Besides, if she were being honest, the dresses the actors had worn in _Mary Poppins_ hadn't exactly been completely accurate to their time period.

Ms. Bella left the room with a smile and a wave and Marinette went back to her work. Once she was sure that she wasn't going to be interrupted, she called Tikki out.

"The show was _fantastic,_ " Tikki gushed. During the last performance, the kwami had left Marinette's side to watch the performance from the safety of the rafters. "I loved the songs, and the dances, and all of the special effects all put together-!"

"It sounded amazing from the back," Marinette agreed. "I would have loved to see the final product, but they needed me back here."

"I think I've heard of the one they're doing next!" Tikki said excitedly, wriggling around in the air. "I want to see how they've made it into a musical."

"I'm curious, too. I've only ever seen the movie. Which is funny, actually, since I think the musical actually came first." Marinette pushed the rack up against the wall- she would finish getting things put away in the storage room on Monday, since it was crazy late now- and picked up her bag. "Now come on. I want to get out on patrol. Chat Noir seemed really down last time we talked."

"Do you think there's something going on in his civilian life?" Tikki asked, floating over to perch on top of Marinette's bag.

"I'm sure of it." Her happy-go-lucky partner wasn't one to let things get him down easily and when he was hurting, he hid it well. The fact that he was openly upset was a bad sign. "I stopped the bakery earlier and picked up some treats. I'll save a couple cookies for you, of course-" she giggled at Tikki's sigh of relief "-but if he can't tell me what's going on, then the only way I can try to cheer him up is through his stomach. He likes cookies and croissants and-"

"I think we'd get along," Tikki giggled as Marinette closed up the costume area and headed down the hallway. "Or maybe we'd fight over sugary things!"

"There's plenty to go around, you know that." Marinette pushed open the small side door that led outside and headed out, waving to the few stagehands and actors still milling around. They were going to be having a party in celebration of finishing up the play and Marinette had been invited, but she had set up a patrol tonight with Chat Noir and she wasn't going to miss it, not when her partner had been in a funk for a good chunk of the week-

Well. Okay, that wasn't _exactly_ true. Chat Noir might have been in _more_ of a funk recently, but she could hardly forget about the other patrols where he had seemed distracted and out of sorts. So she definitely wasn't going to leave her partner alone now.

As soon as Marinette cleared the still-milling theater crowds she ducked behind a bench and transformed. Soon Ladybug was racing over the rooftops, swinging and flipping her way towards their meeting place. She landed near-silently a few rooftops away and padded forward silently. She would have to be careful if she ever wanted to sneak up on her partner and see how he was doing _before_ he could sense her and try to put on a brave face, just like he always did.

One more house divider, and Ladybug was peering over to look at her partner. His leather-clad shoulders were slumped and his head was hanging as he waited for her. Ladybug knew full well that if he knew she were there, he would be doing his best to smile and keep his shoulders straight.

Quietly, Ladybug hopped over the last divider and snuck up behind her partner. He tensed suddenly, sniffing the air. His head rose and he turned partway, finally catching sight of her.

"Ladybug! Are those pastries I smell?"

"They are, kitten. I thought you might like them." Ladybug set the bag down in Chat Noir's lap before settling next to him. "What's wrong?"

Chat Noir's eyes flew open wide as he looked at her. Just like she had suspected, his shoulders had straightened and he was working to keep a smile on his face. "Uh- Nothing! Nothing's wrong, why would you think-"

"You don't have to hide it, you know," Ladybug said with a sigh. "I can tell you're down about something. You can talk to me, you know. Secret identities or no, if someone's making you upset, I _will_ fight them."

Chat Noir's lips pulled up into a smile at that. "It's not exactly something you can fight. I'm fine, really-"

"I'll fight _you_ if you say you're fine again when it's clearly not true." Ladybug nudged her partner's shoulder with her own as he bit into the first chocolate-filled croissant. "C'mon, kitty."

"It's got to do with my civilian life," Chat Noir warned after he swallowed his bite. "I _could_ use someone to talk to, but..."

"If you need someone to talk to, then that's more important than secret identities." Ladybug leaned against him again, wrapping an arm around Chat Noir's waist. "Don't feel like you need to if you aren't comfortable with it, but I'm definitely here if you want to talk."

Chat Noir fell silent, taking another few bites of his croissant. Ladybug let her head drop onto Chat Noir's shoulder as she waited for an answer. After a moment, Chat Noir let out a long sigh.

"It's my soulmate," Chat Noir admitted finally. Ladybug did her best not to groan. _Great_. Soulmates were a topic that she and Chat Noir had never brought up and that was the way she liked it. But if Chat Noir needed to talk about it, then she was going to be there for him.

"...are they not what you expected?"

"I haven't met them yet," Chat Noir admitted. He took another bite of his pastry, staring at it for a few seconds as he chewed. "It's...well, I have a weird soulmate bond, one that can sometimes interfere with my civilian life. And I was trying to track them down and I thought I was close, and then right when I thought I was going to find her...well, it didn't work."

Ladybug raised an eyebrow. She really wasn't aware of any soulmate bonds that would allow people to track each other down besides the matching tattoo marks, which wouldn't get in the way at all...though there _were_ some rare soulmate bonds she didn't know about. Maybe Chat Noir had one of those types, but really, she shouldn't be asking. Or...well, she _supposed_ that maybe the soulmates that wrote on their arms might be able to try to track each other down, or maybe Chat Noir was trying to match up a soulmate mark and he had seen one that was similar but not _quite_ the same- but how would that interfere with his civilian life?

"And I just want to _know_ ," Chat Noir sighed, snuggling into Ladybug's side. "And I really thought I would get to meet them earlier this week, only to hit a complete dead end. It's just discouraging."

It was probably _more_ discouraging to _not_ have a soulmate mark when she really wanted one, but Ladybug wasn't going to say that. Her partner didn't need to be burdened with her problems right now, and besides, she didn't know all of the details of Chat Noir's situation. Maybe it was actually worse than it sounded.

"And my friends aren't being terribly helpful," Chat Noir said with a sigh. "Two of them just keep talking about how I should just be patient and that I'll find my soulmate eventually, but what do they know? They've been together since collège."

"And your other friends?"

"One keeps talking about the probability of me finding my soulmate within a specific timeframe and the other doesn't have a, y'know, so I wouldn't want to bug her with it and our schedules keep clashing." Chat Noir sounded really down about that. "I've only seen her a few times recently since she's been crazy busy with her job, anyway, so even if I wanted to talk to her about it I wouldn't be able to. And it's not exactly something I can talk to her about over text."

"Right, I suppose not." Ladybug watched as Chat Noir fished a cookie out of the bag she had brought. "...uh, does your soulmate _know_ that you're looking for her?"

Chat Noir's lips twisted up into a rueful smile. "I don't exactly have her phone number to tell her. I guess I'll just have to keep searching," he added, sounding exhausted. "It's just taking so _long_."

"Patience, _chaton_ ," Ladybug said with a laugh. She tapped his bell. "You'll find her, I know you will. You're an impatient kitty, aren't you?"

"Just a little," Chat Noir said with a laugh. He glanced over the city, a gentle smile spreading across his face. "I suppose I should be a little more patient, right? I just need to keep busy and keep my mind off it until I can try again. I'll find them eventually."

Ladybug let her gaze drop away from Chat Noir and to her own arms, where she knew full well that under the material of her suit, her arms were bare of any soulmate marks whatsoever.

"Yeah," she echoed. "Eventually."

* * *

Adrien let out a long sigh as he finished his final exam for the semester. He handed it over to the teacher's aide with a quiet _thanks_ before packing up and heading out of the room.

He walked down the hallways, glancing around as he did. A few professors passed by him, and Adrien wondered if any of them were the professors that he would actually be meeting the next semester. He knew a couple from his first half-semester in the classroom, but those were the first-year students teachers, the ones who did the basic classes and not so much the more advanced ones. It was a strange feeling to know that this was technically his second year at the university- with a year and a half completed, he was halfway through the first part of his journey to become a teacher- and yet the hallways and buildings and professors were still unfamiliar to him.

And they would likely stay that way, if Max couldn't turn up any other leads. Adrien had talked to his advisor right before he started taking his finals, and the man had said that there would be no way for Adrien to take his final-year classes remotely, and the professors wouldn't want to deal with Adrien having to duck out of their classes in those upper-level classes. He would have to suspend his schooling until he could find his soulmate.

If he couldn't track down his soulmate by the end of the school year, Adrien was tempted to go through all of the theaters in the country one by one to try to find her. He didn't want to abandon his degree even for a short time, because that meant that many more years under his father's thumb, tolerating being prodded and poked and bossed around for photoshoots and struggling to hide his superhero secret identity from his father.

Adrien texted the Gorilla, letting him know that he was ready to get picked up. While he waited for a reply, he wandered down the hallways, trying to find the rooms he would be in the following semester for labs and discussion. It took a few minutes- Adrien had never ventured to those parts of the building as a first-semester student- but eventually, he found the rooms.

Immediately Adrien spotted a problem. All of the rooms were off of fairly large hallways, which meant that if he had to step out to sing, a lot of people would probably see him. He might even have to try to dash to the men's bathroom down the hall to avoid disrupting other classes.

His phone buzzed, letting Adrien know that his driver was waiting for him out front. As he headed for the door, Adrien's brain strayed back to his increasingly worried thoughts- was he right to risk the chance of interrupting class and getting himself labeled as an inconsiderate ass? Sure his soulmate _normally_ didn't seem to be active in the mornings, and his in-person labs and discussion classes were all as early as he could get them, but she _had_ been active early a few times.

That wasn't a good sign. What if she was taking early classes as well? What if she had _theater_ classes first thing in the morning?

"Stop worrying, you dweeb," Plagg grumbled from inside of Adrien's jacket, and Adrien realized that he had been muttering frantically under his breath. "You can always drop classes if they're a problem. The administration will understand."

Adrien let out a long breath as he pushed open the door and headed outside. For once, Plagg actually had some pretty good advice. If he found out that his soulmate was regularly up early on certain days, he _could_ just drop out of the class or try to switch to another section. His professors would understand, since he would have to tell them about his soulmate bond before the semester really got started. It wasn't ideal, of course, but at least he wasn't locking himself into a full semester of potential embarrassment as he wrestled with his bond.

"So stop worrying about it and enjoy the holidays!" Plagg wriggled excitedly. "Think of all of the treats! Think of the baked Brie! The holiday cheesecake! The goat cheese spreads!"

Adrien managed a small smile as he headed out to the car and slid into the backseat. As soon as the Gorilla smoothly pulled away from the curb, though, his smile dropped.

He shouldn't have gotten his hopes up, back before he went to the musical. He had lost himself in daydreams about what his holidays would be like with his soulmate at his side and spent hours wondering what it would feel like to sing with her when they were right next to each other. Now that he was facing the holidays alone- well, _alone_ as in _without his soulmate_ , not necessarily _completely_ alone, since he _would_ be getting together with his friends several times- even the colorful decorations around the city couldn't lift his mood.

Above the city, grey clouds bunched and gathered, turning dark before a heavy snow started falling. Flakes fell to the ground, turning grey as they hit the road and were run over.

Maybe the city was merry and ready for the holidays, but at least the weather reflected Adrien's mood.

* * *

 _Next time: Christmas!_


	8. Chapter 8

_In which Adrien sings :D_

* * *

Adrien's soulmate was certainly looking forward to the holidays. He knew that because she- and, by extension, _he_ \- kept bursting out into song. Sometimes it was a full song, sometimes only a verse or two, sometimes just humming a song or a few bars, but it was _often_.

At least he didn't have any photoshoots scheduled and so could stay home, singing along cheerfully as he played video games and started looking over his course books for the next semester. All of his remaining obligations were just with friends, and they would understand if he interrupted their gathering to sing. Knowing them, they might even join in, just for fun.

"Fair warning- my soulmate has been bursting into song practically all day," Adrien told Nino as soon as he stepped into his friend's living room for their holiday get-together. "So I doubt that I'll be able to make it through the evening without singing at all."

Nino laughed. "Well, I should _hope_ that you'll do a bit of singing. The four of us got invited to go join Rose and a few others in caroling near the Eiffel Tower later this evening- and _yes_ , you have to join us. It'll be fun."

Adrien's eyes widened and he felt the familiar frustration well up as yet _again_ , even his best friend didn't seem to be taking the problems his soulmate bond came with seriously. He had _told_ Nino that he wasn't going to sing again until he found his soulmate. "I can't. You _know_ I can't. I'll come along, fine, but I'm not singing."

" _Dude_. It's the holidays! Just this once."

"Soulmate bonds don't take a holiday. I'm not that lucky." Adrien crossed his arms stubbornly. What he had _thought_ would be a nice, relaxing get-together was fast turning stressful, and a small, panicky part of him was tempted to turn around and head right back out. Only the fact that he hadn't gotten to see his friends as much as he would have liked lately kept him in place. "Like I said, I can come. But I won't sing. I don't want to freak my soulmate out."

"Just sing her a message before we start caroling!" Alya called from the kitchen. "Like, ' _Hey, soulmate, my name is Adrien and I'm your soulmate, come kiss me under the Eiffel Tower-"_

"Already asked Max about that!" Adrien called back, cutting off Alya's awkward-sounding warbling. "We found a site that says that it doesn't work, though. Just like with those bonds where people write on their arms. If I tried to send a specific message, my soulmate would just end up humming the tune. Or singing the original lyrics, the site really wasn't clear."

"Then sing some song about the Eiffel Tower first- no, a _couple_ songs, it can't be that hard to find them- before we start caroling. That could go around the requirement, surely."

Adrien gave the wall in the direction of Alya's voice a deadpan stare. "And what are the chances that my soulmate actually lives in Paris- _and_ is in the city right now? And considering that it would be completely out of the blue, what's the likelihood that she would actually pay attention to the lyrics enough to catch on _and_ be able to get to the Eiffel Tower before we leave?"

There was a "Ah, fair point," from the kitchen. Nino still didn't look convinced.

"You don't need to be self-sacrificing forever, you know," he told Adrien. "Like, I don't get it. You _could_ sing and sure, it would be inconveniencing her, but she's been inconveniencing _you_. I know that you're used to it, but that's not healthy."

"Except I'm in a position where I can handle being inconvenienced, and I don't know if she can say the same," Adrien argued. "Like, sure, it's annoying if I have to delay my degree. But I can afford to stretch my uni experience out for a couple extra years, even if I don't _want_ to, because my family has plenty of money. I can even put it on hold for a bit and it won't screw up my life, because I can still model and earn money that way. Not everyone has that security. _And_ I'm looking for her, and I don't want to scare her into not doing musicals anymore."

" _Dude_ -" Nino started, but Alya interrupted him

"Nino, I need some help in the kitchen, please!"

"Coming, coming!"

"Turnabout is fair play, you know," Plagg said from inside of Adrien's collar as Nino dashed away to help Alya.

"Except _she_ doesn't know that she's forcing me to sing. And I can deal with it, like I literally _just_ said. It's hardly the same." Adrien's soulmate was just innocently going about her life, enjoying her singing and not realizing that she was causing her soulmate any discomfort. If he sang, he _knew_ that his soulmate would be puzzled, and probably more than a little alarmed over the future of her career.

Plagg just shrugged. "Well, then maybe it's time she learned. It could be her Christmas present, knowing that she has a soulmate. I'm sure she's just like you were, when you didn't know that you had a soulmate and you were all sad about it. Do you _want_ your soulmate to be mopey?"

"What if she realizes what's going on and stops doing musicals because she's worried about singing at an inappropriate time?" Adrien countered. "Then I'll never find her!"

Plagg groaned at him. "Or she might limit her singing to certain times of the day only and work at looking for you at the same time you look for her. It probably helps that it's the holidays, not just some random day. It's a special occasion."

Adrien had to think about it. Much to his surprise, Plagg _had_ made a good point. He had gone so far out of his way to avoid singing that it was likely- _highly_ likely- that his soulmate didn't even know that he existed or that she had any sort of soulmate bond. Adrien didn't want to think of his soulmate feeling as lonely as he had before his bond appeared, so it would make sense if he sang once so that she could catch on. And the holidays _were_ a good time to find out, because that was a time of the year when even people who didn't usually sing sometimes sang. If he sang now, then maybe she would know that she didn't have to worry about him interrupting her on a regular basis.

He could only try and hope for the best, really. But this could be his chance to get a bit of normalcy back in his life while still allowing his soulmate to live normally.

There was a knock at the door, and then it pushed open and Marinette stepped through. She grinned when she saw Adrien, wasting no time in setting her purse down so that she could step forward and wrap him up in a tight hug. Adrien returned the hug eagerly, grinning down at his friend. A second later, he was sniffing the air.

"Do I smell butter and chocolate?"

Marinette giggled. "I brought pain au chocolat because I know that's your favorite. There should be enough to have both before we go out caroling and after we come back to warm up."

"Ah, you're my favorite." Adrien gave Marinette another friendly squeeze before releasing her. "Did the end of your semester go well?"

Adrien was pleased to see Marinette nod. "Yeah! It was crazy busy and my fingers got pricked by _so_ many pins because I was working really fast to finish up the last of my projects, but it went smoothly enough, all things considered. And yours?"

He just shrugged. "It was all right. I finished up the last of my tests midweek, so I've kind of been floating since then."

"We'll have to get together often over the break, then," Marinette decided, patting Adrien's arm. Adrien felt his mood lift just by being next to Marinette. Her positive, cheerful attitude almost never failed to make him smile, and he wished that they hung out together more often. "I'll be free for most of the break. Just text me if you're available."

Adrien grinned. "I will. You might have to ban me from the bakery, I'll come over so often."

"Oh, I would never do that. My parents love you too much." Marinette beamed up at him, all sugar and sunshine, and a traitorous part of Adrien's heart wondered what his life would be like if Marinette were his soulmate. It would probably involve a lot of warm family dinners with Marinette and her parents, and curling up together comfortably to study up in her room, each working on their own thing but close enough to exchange little comments every once in a while. It would be comfortable, and there wouldn't be all this _drama_ of having to find an unknown soulmate, and-

-and Adrien had to pull himself away from those thoughts before he fell for someone who wasn't his soulmate again.

Maybe Plagg was right and he _did_ just have a thing for blue-eyed, dark-haired girls. His kwami would probably fall out of the air laughing if Adrien's soulmate ended up looking similar.

"Stop hogging Marinette!" Alya called. She appeared around the corner, looking a bit flushed from the heat of the stove, and wasted no time in trotting over to pull Marinette into a brief hug. She hugged Adrien next. "Hey, has Nino told you what we're doing tonight? Rose just called me this afternoon, because several of her volunteers dropped out."

Marinette giggled. "Actually, _Rose_ told me. I ran into her earlier today and was quite surprised to hear that I had been volunteered."

Alya laughed at that, and then turned to him. "Adrien? Will it be okay? You don't _have_ to sing if you don't really want to."

"Yeah, it'll be fine," Adrien told her. He shrugged slightly at her questioning look, deciding that he could explain his reasoning later if she asked. "I'm looking forward to seeing Rose again, it's been forever!"

"She's been busy with all of her charity events," Marinette agreed. "Organizing events and volunteering and doing school, all at once. I ran into her earlier this semester and asked what she had been up to that week and-" Marinette threw her hands up in the air, making an overwhelmed expression. " _Wow_. She even had a spreadsheet so that she could keep everything straight and not miss anything. There was a shift at an animal shelter, making dinner at a homeless shelter, a meeting about how to allocate the money they had raised at a bake sale..."

Adrien's head spun a bit imagining that. He hoped that Rose wasn't overextending herself- he knew that if it weren't for his disruptive soulmate bond keeping him from going out, he would have been likely to join a few too many activities at university and burn himself out- but he was sure that Rose knew her limits.

"Anyway, we'll be meeting up with her in an hour," Alya said. "And dinner is ready, so let's eat! Nino and I have been working on it for most of the afternoon."

Marinette giggled at the same time Adrien let out a chuckle. "Nino's been helping? Not just sampling as you go along?"

There was an indignant shout from the kitchen, and then Nino emerged, plates in hand. He gave Adrien a disgruntled look. "Just because I set our dinner on fire _once_ last year..."

Adrien's grin just widened.

"Correction: I supervised, and told Nino what to do so that everything would end up edible." Alya grinned at Nino's pout. "What, babe? That's what happened!"

"Yeah, but you didn't need to _tell_ them that!"

Dinner flew by in a flurry of conversation and laughter. Adrien grinned as Nino shared a story about a mix-up in files when one of his classmates was mixing at a club, where the file was labeled as another song and the mixing went down less than smoothly.

"He mixed a slow jazz piece into a heavy rock 'n roll song," Nino told them with a snicker. "They had completely different key signatures, too! It was a complete mess."

"Did he get in trouble?" Marinette wanted to know. Nino shook his head.

"Nah, not once he explained what had happened. They figured that one of the other DJs must have messed with things as a prank, so they had to go through and check all of the files to make sure they were right. It took them _forever_."

Adrien had to do his best not to laugh at that. He could just picture the expressions of everyone in the club, dancing or swaying innocently and then getting absolutely _blasted_ by heavy rock. He felt sorry for Nino's classmate, though- he must have been _mortified._

Before long, they were all getting bundled back up again to head out and join Rose. Adrien adjusted his scarf around his neck- a new one from the previous year that Marinette had made for him, green like his eyes and oh-so-soft- and made sure that Plagg was tucked away in one of his coat pockets. Next to him, Marinette was adjusting pink earmuffs over her ears and making sure that her own scarf was secure.

"Rose said that she would have hot chocolate there for us to drink while we sing," Nino told them as they finished getting bundled up. "So we shouldn't need to bring water bottles or anything like that."

"Who knows if the hot chocolate will still be hot, though," Alya added with a laugh. "Rose's group will have been out for an hour already. We're relieving a few of the singers that started earlier in the evening," she explained to Adrien. "And then we'll get relieved by the last group. Rose just didn't have enough people to really fill out the middle time slot with the last-minute drop-outs, and it would look funny if there were only, like, four people singing in the area they have set up."

"A _ha_."

They headed outside, where a light snow was falling. Adrien grinned as Marinette spun around, her arms stretching out to catch the falling flakes. She slipped on a patch of ice and he hastily stepped forward to catch her before she could injure herself.

"Thanks," Marinette said breathlessly, grinning up at him. "I just get so excited about the snow! It really makes it feel like the holidays."

Adrien glanced around, taking in the colorful lights glowing through the fluffy snow in the window boxes and in the trees along the street that had been decorated. Snow swirled in the streetlights, accumulating in little piles along walls and on the parked cars on the streets and in the wreaths hung on doors. It clung to the garlands wrapped around light posts and hung from balconies.

It _did_ look like the holidays now. Adrien felt his mood lift up even more and he joined Marinette in practically skipping along the sidewalk, occasionally slipping and stumbling a little bit as he did. He grinned, feeling lighter than he had in a while.

Being out with his friends was _fun_. Add that to the excitement that he had found a way to let his soulmate know about their bond without risking her freaking out and potentially stepping away from her musicals and acting, and Adrien was already having a great evening.

Even with the crowds around the Eiffel Tower, it wasn't hard to find Rose's group. The carolers' voices rose above the chatter of the crowd, along with a recording of a piano accompaniment. A table was set out with a container of what was likely to be the hot chocolate and cups next to the group, and one of the carolers was getting himself a drink.

Adrien didn't recognize most of the group, which he wasn't surprised about. He was sure that they were mostly people that Rose had met in university, either in her classes or through the many, many clubs she was involved in. Rose was on the end of the group and was singing along whole-heartedly, her nose and cheeks red from the wind. She grinned and waved when she caught sight of their group, trotting out to greet them once the carol had finished.

"Thank you so much for doing this!" Rose told them, her grin wide. "We're trying to get money to buy presents for poor families, and it would hard to be able to get anyone to notice us if there were only a couple people singing." She pointed to a brightly-painted box on the table that Adrien hadn't noticed before. There was a sign posted next to it explaining their goal. "People have been _so_ generous so far, so we hope to keep that going!"

"Isn't it a bit late to be buying presents for the kids this year?" Adrien asked. The holidays were only a few days away, and he would have to imagine that it would be difficult get presents _and_ get the recipients lined up all in that amount of time.

Rose shrugged. "The charity might put donations they get now into the pot for presents for next year, I'm not sure. Either way, every bit helps!"

Before he knew it, Adrien was getting herded into place in the line, Alya and Nino on one side and Marinette on the other. Rose shoved a songbook into each of their hands- "We follow the order of the songs in the book, then just go back to the start once we finish," she explained- and then they were ready to go.

And so Adrien sang. For the first time in over a year, he got to choose the songs he sang instead of having his soulmate choose for him. Warmth bloomed in his chest, like it always did when he sang along with his soulmate whole-heartedly at home when no one was around.

A grin snuck onto Adrien's face as he belted out the second verse. His soulmate, wherever she was, must have decided to just roll with it and sing along with him. There was no way he would feel so warm and connected to her if she was resisting like he so often did.

He could only hope that she felt the same way after nearly two hours of caroling.

An hour in, during a short break for them to get a quick drink and for Rose to reset her playlist, Adrien noticed that Marinette was shivering slightly next to him. Her arms were crossed against the chill as they waited for the rest of their group to get back. Adrien frowned at that, stepping a bit closer to his friend to try to block some of the wind. They were going to be out here for probably a good half-hour more, at the very least, and it was going to be miserable for Marinette if she was cold. After another moment of deliberation, Adrien stepped even closer and wrapped an arm around Marinette's shoulder, pulling her into his side. Marinette looked up in surprise, then flashed a bright smile at him, tucking herself close.

"Thanks," she told him, curling closer as she adjusted her scarf around her neck. "I don't know why I'm chilly all of a sudden. I was nice and toasty a minute ago."

"Maybe you've just been outside for too long and it caught up with you or something," Adrien suggested, suppressing his own shiver. Without the warmth from his soulmate bond, the chill from the air had set in, and he could feel the bite of the wind even more keenly. "Does this help?"

"Yeah! Thanks, Adrien."

The next song started up with a few tinny notes from the piano recording Rose had, and Adrien didn't hesitate to join in, holding his songbook up so Marinette could see it as well. The warm feeling in his chest flared back up even brighter than before as he sang, warming him to the bone, and Adrien's heart was practically floating.

When he found his soulmate, Adrien had decided, one of the first things he wanted to do together was sing something. They would sing together every evening-

-or would the lovely warm feeling that he got from singing fade once he kissed his soulmate? Adrien knew from his photographer that the need to sing along would fade, but did that mean that other things would change as well? Adrien didn't want them to.

By the time their replacements arrived, Adrien's throat was starting to feel a little scratchy from singing so much in the cold air. He waved to Juleka and her brother as they joined the group along with several strangers. Once the song was over, Adrien and Marinette stepped out to get a drink while the rest of the group started in on a new carol.

"I'm afraid it's not very warm anymore," Rose said apologetically as she handed a cup to each of them. "It was fine for the first hour, but..."

"It's been- what, almost four hours since then? I'm amazed you have anything left at all." Adrien took a long sip and _yeah_ , it was definitely not _hot_ chocolate anymore, but it was still tasty. "You had a lot of people lined up."

"I had to tap a lot of my friends to help fill out the list," Rose admitted. "There were a lot of people in our club who would have helped, but they were going home for the holidays and they live outside of the city. Next year, I'll know to do it earlier, before people leave. And my mom brought more hot chocolate before you guys arrived. I'm sure we would have run out otherwise."

"I think we're going to take off, Rose," Alya said, materializing behind Marinette. Behind her, Nino tucked a bill into the donation box, which had been getting steadily fuller throughout the night. "It's getting pretty nippy out here. Don't get sick from staying out so long."

"Oh, I'll be fine," Rose assured them cheerily. She adjusted her bubblegum-pink scarf around her neck, and Adrien wondered if it was maybe a gift from Marinette. "I've got plenty of layers on. Thanks for coming! And if I don't see you before the holidays, have a merry Christmas and a happy new year!"

"You too, Rose," the four of them said in near-unison, and then they waved to the carolers and headed back towards Nino's apartment. Adrien linked his arm around Marinette's as they walked, keeping his friend close by his side and warm. It didn't take long for them to get back and polish off some properly _hot_ hot chocolate and what was left of the pain au chocolat before bidding each other good-night and going home.

That night, Adrien went to bed with a smile on his lips.

* * *

 _A/N: The ONE time when NOT singing would have told Adrien more, and he sings. Oh, Adrien..._

 _I edited this chapter to try to explain Adrien's reasoning behind not singing better, since I think I maybe had reasoning/soulmate bond rules in my head but forgot to actually include them in the actual story before._

 _So, like with pretty much every soulmate story with the writing-on-skin type bond, information about them/where they are can't be transmitted. Whether or not Adrien could technically make up a song that goes "hey you have a soulmate but don't let it get in your way" is questionable, but in this case they've assumed that that's the case (the lack of information online about the bond Does Not Help). Adrien is being VERY cautious because he doesn't want his soulmate to stop "performing" (and the ironic thing is that, if it was pretty much anyone else and they WERE a performer, getting freaked out by random uncontrollable singing would absolutely do that, but in this specific case with Marinette as his soulmate, his reluctance is actually delaying the discovery since Marinette would absolutely go to Nino and Alya and there would be Revelations )._

 _(Is it apparent yet that I love my irony? Because I absolutely love irony.)_


	9. Chapter 9

Before Adrien knew it, the next semester had started and he found himself back on campus, arriving first thing in the morning and leaving before the majority of the student population had even started their first class of the day. He had let his teachers know that he might have to duck out to avoid disrupting the lesson on the first day of classes, but they already knew about him.

Really, Adrien shouldn't have been as surprised about that as he had been. He- well, Nathalie- had had to reach out to professors for the previous few semesters, first to get permission for the Gorilla to sit in and record things for Adrien, and then to let Adrien take his classes online when normally they wouldn't be offered that way. The entire science department had probably heard about him and his soulmate bond by now, which- well, it was a bit embarrassing, really, to have them bending over backwards to accommodate him, but it certainly made it easier to explain his situation to his professors quickly.

For the first few weeks of the semester, things went smoothly. He hadn't had to step out of his in-person classes at all- clearly his assumption that his soulmate wasn't a morning person was correct (well, unless she was in another time zone entirely, which he _supposed_ was possible). While his photoshoots were still as interrupted as ever, it wasn't any more of a problem than it had been.

And then, halfway through his chemistry lab several weeks into the semester, there was a familiar tickle in his throat. Adrien winced, quickly excused himself, and made a dash for the hallway before he could start singing in class. He had just gotten out to the hallway and gotten the door closed behind him- a little hard, but that couldn't be helped- before a song ripped out of his throat.

" _The hills are alive with the sound of music-!"_ Adrien cringed as several passing students turned to look at him. He tried to muffle it, but the murmured singing only garnered him more odd glances. Ducking his head, Adrien hurried towards the bathroom, hoping that it was empty as he continued his mumbled singing. Thankfully the only person in the men's bathroom was leaving as Adrien dashed in, though he didn't depart without giving Adrien another strange look.

Adrien headed straight into one of the stalls, locking it behind him. It wouldn't keep anyone who came in from hearing his singing- and the singing echoed oddly in the small bathroom, making it sound less than good- but it _would_ shield him from the judging, curious looks.

"I would have thought that she would be more careful with when she sings after you sang at Christmas," Plagg commented as Adrien paused for air between verses. "Now that she knows that she has a soulmate." There was a pause. "Unless your soulmate is an idiot and somehow missed figuring that out."

"I don't know how that would happen, I was singing for close to two hou- _my heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds-"_ Adrien scowled as his voice was ripped away from his control again, a bit irritated even with as pretty as the song was. Plagg sniggered.

"Maybe she was asleep and didn't wake up," Plagg suggested. "I've heard of people sleep-talking before. Maybe she sleep-sang."

Somehow Adrien doubted that. If it had just been one song or part of one song then sure, he could understand that. But he had been singing fairly continuously for _two hours_ , and it hadn't been _that_ late. Unless his soulmate slept like the dead, there was no way she could have missed his singing. It was _much_ more likely that she had just forgotten temporarily about their connection and the singing would stop soon.

It didn't. Several people came into the bathroom briefly, but exited quickly after they heard the singing. Adrien managed to hear several rather uncomplimentary comments about weird people being muttered as the other students headed right back out, slamming the door behind them.

By the time Adrien was sure that he had stopped singing, his lab class was almost over. Sighing, he slunk from the bathroom and back into the classroom, making an apologetic face at his professor as he headed back to his station. His labmates didn't look impressed as he came back.

"Great job skipping a third of class," his labmate Ted said a bit scathingly, barely sparing Adrien a glance as he peered at the beaker in front of him and made a note on his lab paper. "What was so important that you couldn't manage to actually help with the work?"

Adrien cringed. Ted already didn't like him very much- he had noticed that Adrien was never in lectures and had decided that Adrien must just be skipping- and this wasn't going to help. "I'm sorry."

Ted just snorted and turned back to his worksheet.

"Are you feeling ill or something?" Adrien's other labmate Nick asked quietly. He was frowning. "You looked like you were about to throw up or something when you rushed out."

"Kind of yes and kind of no?" Adrien offered. "It's the same reason I have to do my lectures online."

Ted snorted loudly. " _Great_. Fancy boy gets even _more_ favoritism, just like his father. Must be nice to be rich."

Adrien ducked his head, frustration brewing under his skin. Before he could even _try_ to explain (and did he even want to have to explain himself to someone like Ted?), Ted had finished his paper, gathered up his things, and headed up to the front of the room to turn his lab sheet in.

Nick blinked, startled as they watched their labmate leave. Ted was clearly complaining to their lab instructor about Adrien's absence. Dr. Dubay didn't look at all moved by his complaints.

Adrien wouldn't be surprised if Ted decided to go to the administration or something to complain about the perceived bias. That was just the kind of person he was.

"You don't have to tell us anything if it's a medical issue," Nick assured Adrien, pushing over his completed worksheet for Adrien to read over. "Seriously. Just ignore Ted, he's being an ass on purpose."

"It's not exactly _medical_ ," Adrien admitted, figuring that Nick was a pretty nice person and it wouldn't hurt to tell him everything. After all, he didn't want to alienate his friendly lab partner as well. "I just have a really weird soulmate bond. It's called a musical bond- or at least that's what I've been told- so whenever my soulmate sings, I have to sing."

Nick blinked. "Oh. That... is a pain. Oh!" he exclaimed. "Was she singing earlier and you left so you wouldn't be serenading us? Doesn't she know better than to sing during this part of the day? You'd think that you two would be careful about _when_ you sing with that kind of a bond."

"I'm sure it just slipped her mind." Adrien skimmed Nick's paper, trying to follow along with the experiment on his paper as he filled in the parts that he hadn't been able to be there for on his own paper. "Or she's got some sort of theater class and couldn't get out of singing. I'm hoping she just forgot, because if she has to sing more really often during this lab then I'll have to switch lab sections. I don't want to be missing out on helping with experiments."

"Well, don't worry _too_ much about it," Nick assured him, patting Adrien's shoulder. "Ted might switch to a different group, but I don't mind it if you have to step out sometimes. Or if you have to, like, hum your way through an experiment." He paused. "Uh, does the same thing happen when she hums, too, or...?"

"Unfortunately, yeah. Anything musical- unless she plays a musical instrument, I guess." Nothing that he or Max had turned up had said anything about musical _instrument_ s somehow transmitting through their bond, which was good. He still played the piano on a regular basis and enjoyed it, and he would hate to think that it was disrupting his soulmate at all.

"You could sing, like, a really obnoxious song back so your soulmate will remember not to sing again during lab- no?" Nick asked when he saw the look on Adrien's face. He cringed slightly. "Yeah, okay, I suppose that would be mean."

"She _must_ be in some sort of musical theater program," Adrien told him. "If she's forgotten about our bond or _somehow_ missed the fact that there _is_ a bond, I don't want her worried that she'll burst out in a really bad song while she's on stage or something. If she quits doing the musicals, then there's no way I'll be able to find her."

"Ooh, fair point." Nick watched Adrien as he wrote a few more things down. "Hey, do you want me to explain any of those steps in more detail so you understand what happened better?"

"Would you? That would be _great_."

* * *

Normally Adrien didn't mind photoshoots. It was easy enough to paste a just-real-enough smile onto his face and pose, his limbs falling easily right into place. He didn't mind the prodding, the makeup, the sometimes constricting clothes, the frequently stressful atmosphere.

Of course, normally Adrien was in a better mood and normally, his father was not there and critiquing his work. Just-real-enough didn't cut it anymore, and Adrien was feeling down enough after his disastrous laboratory class that it was difficult to pull out his best expressions.

"No, no, that's just not right," Mr. Agreste snapped, hovering behind the frazzled photographer's shoulder. "He should not look so _gloomy_ and _wooden_. Adrien, chin up and smile on your face! No, not any teeth. Smile with the lips and the eyes, I shouldn't have to tell you that at this point in your career!"

Adrien hid his wince and tried to think of happy things. The next picture met his father's approval, and Adrien did three more poses before he had to go change clothes. As soon as Adrien's dressing room door shut behind him, he let himself slump against it for a moment. His eyes closed for a long moment as he tried to keep a hold on his professional attitude.

Photoshoots were always just _that_ much more difficult when his father was there. Had he _had_ to be here personally _today?_ Why did his father always have such awful timing?

Pasting a neutral expression on his face, Adrien quickly changed clothes and headed back out. He would do his best to finish this photoshoot without further angering his father, and then maybe he could escape the nearly inevitable lecture on professionalism.

Of course, Adrien's bad luck could only stay away for so long. Three outfits from the end, the tickle built up in his throat. The photographer groaned, recognizing Adrien's expression immediately. Mr. Agreste frowned.

"Is there a problem?"

"It's his soulmate bond," Pierre explained to Mr. Agreste as Adrien tried to sing as quietly as possible, barely moving his lips. His father's frown deepened as he watched him. "When his soulmate sings, he has to sing along, you know. She doesn't really have a schedule."

Mr. Agreste scowled impatiently. "She's still doing that? You've made no progress with finding out who she is and demanding that she stops? I thought you were working on that! It's been _months_. That is _unacceptable_."

"I...I've been _trying_ to track her down, Father, but she might not even be in France," Adrien blurted as soon as he had control of his vocal cords again. His father didn't look particularly impressed, especially as Adrien was forced into singing another song. He turned to Pierre with a clearly displeased expression.

"Does this happen often?"

Pierre shrugged, looking a bit worried as he shot a glance over at Adrien. "Every other photo shoot, maybe? Sometimes it's only one song, sometimes it's a whole slew. We have learned to work around it, but it _is_ a bit disruptive."

"This has gone on long enough. I'm going to hire a professional detective to track the girl down and get her to cut it out." Gabriel ignored Adrien's frantic head-shaking. "You've had your chance to play detective. I will not have this disrupting my photo shoots and it's far past time you start doing runway shows. Now stop shaking your head like that, it'll mess up your hair and then we'll have to waste even _more_ time fixing it before we can go on."

Adrien froze immediately, snapping back into pose.

The rest of the photoshoot went much the same. Adrien winced as his soulmate interrupted it twice more, each time just singing one song before tapering off again. His father's expression grew more displeased with every interruption, and by the end his face was pinched. He spent the ride home on the phone with a detective, setting up a meeting for early the next day.

Adrien slumped into his bed as soon as they got home, staring blankly at the ceiling. He didn't _want_ his soulmate to have to stop singing. She must enjoy it to do it so much, and he would make an awful soulmate if he told her to stop it completely, which he knew was exactly what his father's detective would order if he found her first. She would hate him then, before he even had the chance to meet her.

They might be soulmates, but that didn't mean she had to _like_ him. Adrien was _terrified_ of that happening. What if she just gave him the kiss he needed to _not_ be compelled to sing whenever she did and then just waved him off forever?

"Raindrops on roses on and whiskers on kittens," Adrien sang quietly to himself, remembering the words to his soulmate's current favorite song. Maybe singing would cheer him up. "Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens. Brown paper packages tied up in string. These are a few of my favorite things..."

He would just have to find her first.


	10. Chapter 10

As it turned out, there were _not_ any nun habits from previous shows. Marinette groaned her way out of the costumes closet, looked at the number of habits she had to sew, and groaned some more. She didn't stop groaning until she had finished with the fabric shopping and was elbow-deep in half-sewn pieces. And on top of all of the habits that she had to sew, there were more outfits than Miss Bella had originally anticipated that had to be made from scratch, mostly because of the fairly specific requirements for what the children's clothing was supposed to look like.

Naturally, Marinette enlisted the help of other stagehands for pinning and cutting patterns while she sewed. After all, the light and sound techs weren't _really_ doing any work on their stuff quite yet, so they might as well help her get a few things done.

"My hands are cramping up," Jason joked. The light technician gave his scissor hand a good shake before finishing the pattern he was on. "Are we done yet? Will this torture never end?"

Danielle snorted. The scenery artist had taken a break from painting the set to help Marinette with the cutting and pinning and judging by the look on her face, she was regretting it quite a bit. "Only several thousand more hours to go. Look at all the fabric we have to cut!" She pointed to the mountain of fabric piled up against the wall. "That'll take _ages_."

Marinette giggled from her spot at the sewing machine. "It's nowhere near that bad and you know it. Besides, some of that fabric is for the curtains on the set. That's one cut and a whole lot of hemming."

"Do they ever hire anyone to help you with the sewing?" Jason asked, his face screwed up in concentration as he carefully pinned a pattern to the next piece of fabric "There's so many outfits for this play, and with the curtains to hem as well..."

"The men all wear suits. The theater has plenty, and I've already matched up the suits with the people wearing them. I didn't even have to do any alterations on most of them. Same with most of the dresses." Marinette finished a seam and snipped the threads before pulling out the pins. "Sometimes we get volunteers to help sew, too, if I really won't be able to finish in time. That's why I leave the easy pieces like set curtains for last, because I don't know how much experience volunteers will have."

Marinette was very, very fond of the suits. She was also fond of the maid's outfit- one very minor adjustment and then it was perfect. They were quick checkmarks off of her list of things to do.

"Hey, Jason, question for you," Danielle said suddenly, sitting up and setting her scissors aside. "Someone told me that during one of the performances of _Mary Poppins_ last semester, there was someone else up in the light box with you for one of the performances. What was that all about? Why didn't he just sit in the general audience? There should have been enough seats."

Jason perked up, sitting back on his heels until a cough from Marinette prompted him to keep cutting. He stuck his tongue out at her. "That was really interesting, actually. The guy is trying to find his soulmate."

Marinette unconsciously pressed harder on the pedal. The sewing machine whirred louder. _Really?_ Could she not escape the topic at all? It seemed like soulmates were all anyone talked about these days, which- sure, they were at an age where a lot of people were finding their counterpart or at least getting closer- but _still_. Even as she bent closer to her machine, Marinette couldn't drown out Jason's words.

"He's got one of those really rare bonds, one they never tell you about," Jason continued over the continued _whirr_ from the machine. "When his soulmate sings, he has to sing as well. Or when she hums, too, he told me. It's _really_ weird how it works. He was telling me about it over intermission. If it's a duet sort of thing, he sings the other part opposite her. If it's not, then he sings along with her."

Danielle frowned. "Okay, that is _weird_. I've not heard of anything like that before."

"It's interesting," Jason insisted, raising his voice over the sound of Marinette's whirring sewing machine. "He was positive that she was going to be here because she had been singing stuff from Little House of Horrors and then stuff from Mary Poppins, but he didn't have any luck. If he hadn't look so defeated when the play finished and he hadn't sung at all, I would have been inclined to think that he was making it up just so he wouldn't have to sit in one of the tiny chairs in the theater."

"So you think he was telling the truth, then?" Danielle sounded skeptical. "Maybe he's just a good actor himself."

"No, I looked it up," Jason insisted. "It's an actual thing. Rare, but real. He says that out of nowhere, he just starts singing when his soulmate does. He doesn't even need to know the words or anything, they just come to him."

Despite herself, Marinette winced, feeling sorry for the mysterious visitor. If his soulmate was in musical theater, his day was bound to be interrupted a lot because the theater kids _never stopped singing_. Marinette had had more than a few people rehearsing their songs as she fit them in their costumes and heard others humming absent-mindedly as they did their homework. It rubbed off on everyone around them, too. Marinette hadn't sung along with songs _nearly_ as much before she started hanging out with the theater kids, and she had found herself absent-mindedly humming and even singing without planning on it since she heard the songs all the time.

It was _really_ strange to find herself singing unconsciously one evening, not even having to _think_ about the words while she was doing something entirely different.

"I should have asked for his number," Jason commented a bit absent-mindedly. "I've been really curious ever since if he's made any progress with figuring out where his soulmate is. There can't be _that_ many theaters that would do Little House of Horrors and then Mary Poppins."

"Was any of the cast sick the night he was here?" Danielle suggested. "Do you remember?"

Jason snorted. "I only recognize and remember a few people who've been doing every show since I started here. Whenever I get light instructions, I just go by character, not actor names. Half of the cast could have been out and replaced by understudies, and I wouldn't have noticed."

They all laughed.

"Well, I hope he finds his soulmate," Danielle said. "I know I'll be rooting for him."

"Me, too," Jason agreed. "Poor dude can't move forward with his studies or career if he's going to be breaking out in song whenever."

"Same," Marinette added in. "And seriously, you two- that fabric isn't going to cut itself! Are we cutting or are we talking?"

"Both," Danielle said cheerfully. "But I _suppose_ we could do more cutting while we talk. So, has anyone else heard the news about Jagged Stone's latest tour?"

* * *

The only upside of having his father and his detective investigating Adrien's musical bond was that it wasn't long before they produced the model with the same sort of bond as Adrien. She wasn't particularly impressed about being tracked down and interrogated by the strict, no-nonsense detective, but she warmed up considerably when she actually met Adrien.

"Yeah, it's not quite as romantic as people think it is, is it?" she said sympathetically as their conversation was interrupted by a verse from Jagged Stone's latest single. She raised her voice over Adrien's. "At least you guys have the same taste in music, right? You're wearing a Jagged t-shirt."

Adrien could only nod a little sheepishly. If he had been at home and alone, he would _definitely_ be jamming out right now and singing as enthusiastically as he could. The only problem was that he wasn't at home alone all of the time, and it wasn't exactly _fun_ to be home alone all of the time, either.

"I've heard that musical soulmates are what inspired Disney couples that sing together- you know, the ones where they might be singing a completely new song, or be miles apart and just _happen_ to be singing the same song?" She snorted. "Except it's _so_ romantic there, not inconveniencing them in any way- not even close to the truth. And the people around them don't even care that there's this person wandering by, singing randomly."

"I didn't know that," Adrien commented as soon as the song finished. "They really didn't portray it accurately at all, then, did they?"

"No, because then they would have to admit that it's _the_ most inconvenient soulmate bond _ever_ , and that would mess up the romance." The model- Ella, she was named- scowled. The expression looked out of place on her pretty face. "And of course, they just claimed that they couldn't find anything when they researched musical soulmate bonds, so they only had the general idea of what it was to run on, but I think that they ignored even _that_."

"Pierre said that you tracked down your soulmate," Adrien said before Ella could get too off track. He only had so much time he could spend with her before he had to go to yet another photoshoot to make up for one he couldn't complete because of his soulmate bond. "I was wondering...how did you do that?"

"Ooh, that was awful," Ella said, making a face. "It took me _forever_ to find him. He sang in a choir at a church- it was pretty obvious from the songs he sang, and the way that the songs changed from week to week- so I had to keep going around to churches on Sundays to try to find him. Whenever I was wrong, I ended up singing in the middle of the service. It was _so_ embarrassing."

"Did he have to sing when you sang in church?" Adrien asked curiously.

Emma shook her head, confusing Adrien before she clarified, "I didn't sing when I went to church. I didn't want to get him in trouble. I'm not really one for singing, so I'm not even certain he knew that he had a musical soulmate bond for ages after I figured it out."

Adrien nodded in agreement, glad to hear that he wasn't the _only_ person with a musical bond to make that choice. A lot of people thought that he was crazy to not be singing back- after all, _she_ was inconveniencing _him_ quite a bit, and he had even had a second lab interrupted but thankfully not for _quite_ as long- but he didn't think that the eye-for-an-eye approach was _quite_ right when it came to dealing with one's soulmate. "And I thought that Pierre said that you sometimes would sing during photoshoots? I didn't think there were Sunday morning photoshoots."

"They _do_ have practices during the week," Ella informed him. "And he was practicing other times. Mostly during the evening, but then there were huge chunks of the day when I couldn't go out and get things done." She sighed. "And I couldn't eat then, or have friends over."

"So you just kept going to services until you found him?"

"Not quite. I got a bit fed up with the whole thing and started trying to record the songs I was singing, and then I got a bunch of my friends to go out and figure out which church he was at before I went. And then when I figured out the church, I went to the choir practice." She grinned. "And then I stood outside of the door and started singing a pop song. I felt a little bad for making him randomly sing something else in the middle of a church song, but I figured he had inadvertently embarrassed me enough that I was entitled to a _little_ revenge. Besides," Ella added with a little impish grin. "It made it rather easy for me to figure out who he was. I just had to stick my head in and look for the guy who was red as a stop sign and looking as baffled as could be."

Adrien laughed properly at that. That was _some_ meeting. He was sure that if Ella and her husband decided to have kids, they would _love_ that story.

"The rest of the choir thought it was pretty funny once I explained everything," Ella added. "And the majority of them sang at our wedding. They decided to sing the pop song I interrupted with at our reception."

Adrien's grin widened.

"Oh, there was something I wanted to ask about," Adrien said suddenly, remembering. "So Pierre said that once you kissed your soulmate, you stopped needing to sing when your soulmate did. Is that, like, you lose the ability to know when they're singing completely, or it just fades, or...?"

"It just fades," Ella assured him. "You'll know when she's singing and vice versa, and can sing along just like you do now, without having to think about it. It feels _lovely_ when we sing together. But I don't _have_ to sing if I don't want to, even if we're right next to each other, and it doesn't affect Marc's singing at all. And it's not _distracting_ when he sings, either. It's more like just having a radio turned down low in the background."

"So I would have to make the _choice_ to sing, then?" Adrien asked, just to be sure. "Instead of having to _choose_ to not sing, if I wasn't paying attention?"

Ella grinned. "Yup! _Much_ better, in my opinion. I don't know why it doesn't start off that way. I still would have _looked_ for him, of course, but I wouldn't have needed to be so frantic about it."

Adrien had to agree.

He had to leave shortly after that for a makeup photoshoot, but Adrien was glad that he had been able to talk to someone who had been in the same boat he had been. Still, he had hardly learned anything new. Ella had basically done the same thing Max was having him do now, only she was able to check every Sunday instead of having to wait months between performances.

The only good thing? If she didn't have any new advice, then his father's detective probably wasn't getting far either, and wasn't going to be getting to his soulmate before Adrien himself could.

He had to keep positive. The next performance couldn't be far away, considering how often his soulmate sang. He'd search again, and he wouldn't give up, no matter how frustrating it got.

Something had to give eventually.

* * *

When Adrien arrived home, after another _very_ long, frequently interrupted photoshoot (his father demanded a report of how much time had been lost and had been _very_ displeased at the answer), he was ready to go straight to bed. Instead, he found a call request from Max.

Re-energized- had Max found a new lead with Adrien's most recent information about what songs he was singing?- Adrien texted Max to let him know that he was free to take a call. It didn't take Max long to respond.

"I hope you're free next Monday evening," Max said as soon as Adrien picked up, and Adrien's heart leapt.

"You found the theater?" Adrien asked eagerly. He paused as a thought occurred to him. "Uh, where is it? It can't be in the city, is it? How far away is it? I mean, I _might_ be able to skip my morning lab if needed, but only if finding my soulmate would be a 100% certainty. My professor will probably boot me otherwise, since I've had to step out several times already this semester and I'm missing a lot."

"It's in Paris," Max assured him with a laugh. "And- well, I think we missed something last time. The theater you went to last time is doing The Sound of Music. She _has_ to be there in some shape or form."

Adrien worried his lip, excitement promptly waning away. He had already _tried_ that theater and come up achingly empty. "But how could we have missed anything? I mean, I thought everyone sang."

"I have several conjectures." There was the sound of rustling paper on the other end of the line, and Adrien pictured Max paging through his notes. "One: your soulmate was an extra last time and did not join the chorus, either due to illness or being needed elsewhere. Illness is more likely, as there _was_ a cold spike going around at the end of last semester, when the show was running."

Adrien nodded. "Okay. I wonder why Jason didn't say anything, then."

There was a pause on Max's end. "Who?"

"Jason, the light tech.. The guy I sat next to for the show last time." Adrien sat back in his chair for a moment before scooting forward and waking up his computer. "Maybe he doesn't pay attention to problems in the cast."

"Perhaps." There was another paper shuffle. "My other idea was that perhaps your soulmate is a member of the stage crew. They wouldn't sing during the show itself, but would certainly hear the songs enough to learn them and get them stuck in their heads."

"And to sing along, but not during the performance!" Grinning, Adrien sat up straight again. "Okay, yeah, I'll go again. And I'll ask around more this time to see if I can meet the stage crew if nothing happens during the show. If worst comes to worse, I can do the same thing Ella did when she was trying to find her soulmate."

There was another, longer pause over the phone. "...Ella?"

"A model who has the same kind of soulmate bond as me," Adrien explained, realizing that he hadn't told Max about her or about going to see her. "My father got a detective- I told you that much, right?- and he tracked her down to try to get more information."

"And?"

"Nothing new to how to find my soulmate, but I _did_ find out how the bond changes slightly after I find her. That was the bit I was most curious about, since I figured that we were already doing the most we could with the tracking her down bit. My father was muttering about useless leads, but I thought it was great to talk to someone else like me."

Max made an intrigued noise. "I would be most interested to hear about that visit- though perhaps not right now, since I have an exam tomorrow. I just wanted to let you know what I found."

"It's much appreciated," Adrien assured his friend. "Thanks so much, Max. Good luck on your exam."

"Thank you. Good night."

"So right back to where you were before, huh?" Plagg asked, appearing at Adrien's side. "You were so close to your soulmate and never knew!"

"Unless she was home sick." Adrien still thought that might be the most likely option, mostly just based on how _often_ his soulmate sang. "I bet she was super-disappointed about missing the performance! She probably put in so much work."

Plagg zipped around in front of Adrien. "So are you going to make sure that you can make the Monday show? You don't want Nathalie scheduling you for anything between now and then."

"Of course, of course!" Adrien scrambled to pull up his schedule on his computer. He had limited editing abilities so he couldn't delete anything that Nathalie put in, but he _could_ add his own things- not that he often did. Thankfully Monday night- the first night of the show- was open, so Adrien quickly blocked off that evening, with a bit of extra time in the late afternoon for him to get ready. Once that was done, Adrien flopped back on his bed, a dreamy grin gracing his face. Plagg took one look at him and groaned.

"Oh, what _now?_ "

"It's gonna be less than a week until I meet her, Plagg," Adrien told him. He was grinning at the ceiling like an idiot, but Adrien couldn't bring himself to care. "What do you think it'll be like, meeting her? Will it be love at first sight? Friends to lovers? Ooh, what if she doesn't like me for some reason? Plagg-?"

Groaning, Plagg buried himself under a pile of cheese wrappers. "I do _not_ get enough Camembert to deal with this."

* * *

 _A/N: In Which Marinette Sings Too Much To Notice Anything Amiss lol  
_

 _(and I'm not sorry about it at all :D)_


	11. Chapter 11

Monday afternoon. Five hours before showtime.

Utter _chaos_.

Marinette blinked as she took in the hectic backstage. Things were always a bit crazy before a performance, and more so when it was the first performance of a play- that was why they did one last run-through before going on, after all. But opening was several hours away still, and there was already a bit of a fuss and panic going around the cast. With one last look around, Marinette made a beeline for the costumes, figuring that she might as well make sure that her piece of the production was in order.

"Where is Mireille?" Miss Bella demanded, appearing from around the corner and glancing around at the assembled cast. She looked flustered. "Does anyone know?"

Marinette glanced up from where she was making sure all the costumes were in order and frowned. Mireille was _always_ early to practice, no matter what. There were some murmurs among the group.

"She just texted me," one of the nuns called above the noise. She waved her phone at Miss Bella. "She's sick and can't come in."

A murmur ran around the cast as Miss Bella groaned, running a hand through her hair as the stressed look on her face deepened. "She was fine during last night's practice. Is she positive she can't come in? She doesn't have an understudy!"

"Can we just cut her part out?" another nun asked. "We could say Captain von Trapp has six children instead of seven."

"The audience knows there are meant to be seven kids. If we only have six, it will be confusing! Besides, Louisa is important in several of the songs, and we'd have to alter the script in other places as well." Miss Bella was all but spinning in circles, her hands clutching at her hair. "We can't just cut her out!"

There were more worried glances, which Marinette could understand. Mireille played the part of Louisa, the third of Captain von Trapp's children. It was hardly the largest part, but it would be _very_ noticeable if she were missing. She didn't have an understudy because she was a university student playing the part of a thirteen-year-old and there weren't many university students who could look that young. She hadn't ever missed a performance before- Mireille was nothing if not reliable- so they had thought they would be fine without.

Clearly not. That would teach them to not have an understudy for all of the main parts.

"Is there anyone in the chorus who could step in?" Miss Bella implored, looking at the nuns. There were frantic head shakes. "Anyone who knows the songs and her lines?"

Danielle perked up from where she was checking on their props. "I've heard Marinette singing along a lot! She'd be a perfect Louisa!" She grinned. "She even looks young enough!"

Marinette froze as the entire cast turned to look at her almost as one and Danielle's suggestion sunk in. She knew the lines fairly well, sure (it wasn't just the songs she quoted), but she was hardly an _actress_. The last time she had tried acting was in collège, and it had lasted for all of _maybe_ thirty seconds.

"Oh, Marinette, would you please?" Miss Bella begged, looking at Marinette. "You're practically the same size as Mireille. We can at least run through the scenes she's in before the show starts, and Louisa doesn't have _that_ many lines. You can read through the script in between scenes!"

Marinette protested weakly, but it didn't make any difference. The whole cast was crowded around her, beaming at her and giving her tips. She could feel Tikki giving her an encouraging pat from inside of her pocket, and so she gave in.

It looked like she would be performing for the first time in her life in only a few hours, with only the bare minimum of practice under her belt. And naturally, it would be _live_.

This wasn't going to be fun.

* * *

"I thought you already tried that theater," Nino said as Adrien got ready. He was leaning against the bathroom's doorframe as Adrien carefully combed his hair. "What point is there in going again?"

"Max said that maybe my soulmate was an understudy in the other performance, so maybe she has a part in this one." Adrien wrestled with a knot for a moment before it came loose. He smoothed the lock down and kept working. "And Max said something else, too. He thought that maybe she works on the show, but she's not an actor." After a bit more thought, Adrien had decided that _maybe_ Max's second suggestion, about his soulmate being a stagehand, made more sense. After all, his soulmate hadn't sung during the Little House of Horrors performances either.

Nino's brow furrowed for a moment. "What do you- oh! You mean, like, a stagehand? That makes sense, they would probably be around enough to learn the songs. And then they wouldn't sing during the show. But how are you going to figure out who she is if she isn't an actor?"

"I'll talk to the light guy I was with last time. He might have some suggestions about what I can do." Satisfied with his hair, Adrien pulled away the towel he had wrapped around his shoulders to protect his clothes while he styled his hair. "Some people might already have soulmate marks, so obviously it wouldn't be them."

"She might not advertise her lack of a mark," Nino pointed out as Adrien straightened his shirt and pulled on a light jacket. "So people might assume. That's what people generally do."

"I know," Adrien said, leaving his bathroom and swinging by his desk. He scooped Plagg up from his chair and shoved him into his coat pocket in one smooth move before Nino could notice. He'd feel better having Plagg with him, even if the kwami complained for ages about having to go for a few hours without cheese.

Adrien had stuffed the little glutton earlier just so he wouldn't complain, because there was no _way_ he was going to smell like stinky cheese. He might not meet his soulmate tonight- he had to prepare himself for that possibility- but if he did?

Stinky cheese did not a good impression make.

"I need to get going now," Adrien said as his phone beeped a warning. "Max said that I needed to go early again to get into the light booth. I'll keep you updated, Nino- unless you want to come as well? Because I certainly wouldn't mind paying for your ticket as well-"

"I'll pass," Nino said with a laugh, checking his own phone. "It sounds like a nice play and all, but I told Alya I would proofread her paper tonight and then take her to a late dinner. Good luck with the play, though."

Adrien smiled, trying to beat down the nerves that had suddenly appeared in his stomach. "Thanks."

* * *

Jason looked surprised when Adrien showed up again at the door to the light and sound booth, but he cleared off the extra chair without a fuss and waved Adrien into the room.

"Back to try to find your soulmate again or just to watch?" he asked, snapping the door closed again as soon as Adrien came in.

"Trying to find my soulmate again. She's been singing stuff from the Sound of Music since the start of the semester, so we've been pointed right back to here."

"That's just bizarre." Jason settled back at his spot. "So, did you sing yesterday evening, then? We had a dress rehearsal then."

Adrien frowned slightly as he thought back. Last night he had had dinner with his father and had gotten an update on what the detective had found (not much, mostly because Adrien had resisted cooperating- not that his father knew that). He would have noticed if he had sung.

And he hadn't. That just added more weight to Max's suggestion of a stagehand being his soulmate, then.

" _Bizarre_ ," Jason said again when Adrien told him as much. "Well, I can show you around afterwards and have you meet the cast and crew. If all else fails, we can just line everyone up and have you sing and see who responds."

"Do people typically stick around?" Adrien asked, curious. "Don't plays tend to run a little late? I would think that people would want to leave and get something to eat and go to bed."

Jason laughed. "I think the only people to immediately pack up and leave are the kids that we brought in, and that's mostly on their parents. Cast members will stick around and mingle, and they won't mind staying a few minutes more for something like this. They're all friendly."

Adrien nodded, glancing at his program. The cast was all pictured, and the crew was listed. All together- even not counting the kids- it was quite a few people. He supposed that he shouldn't have been surprised about that. It was a large production, with plenty of moving parts and scenery. It made sense that things would need a lot of manpower to run smoothly.

"Have you heard of the Sound of Music before? Do you know much about it?"

Adrien shrugged. "I know some. I watched the movie as soon as I knew my soulmate was singing songs from it."

"There's more songs in the play," Jason told him, and Adrien let out a soft _oh_.

He had noticed that some of the songs that his soulmate sang hadn't been in the movie, and there was nothing similar. He hadn't thought to look those songs up, though, figuring that maybe they were just random songs that his soulmate had heard and liked.

Adrien watched as the theater filled up. There were a lot of kids mixed among the adults attending the play, and the outfits were fairly dressy. In contrast, Jason was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. The sound tech was dressed the same, though she had headphones hanging around her neck. It made Adrien feel a little overdressed in his button-up shirt, jacket, and slacks, but it was better than feeling underdressed when he was mingling with the rest of the audience.

Besides, if there was any chance that he would meet his soulmate tonight, it wouldn't do to leave a bad first impression.

Adrien put his phone away as a disembodied voice echoed overhead, asking for people to take their seats. The lights dimmed both in the auditorium and onstage, though they stayed brighter in the lighting and sound booth. A few final people rushed to their seats as the voice boomed again.

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. Thank you to coming to our university's production of The Sound of Music! Please find your seats and turn off your cell phones, as the performance is about to begin. Please refrain from taking pictures or talking during the performance. Again, thank you for coming to our performance and we hope that you enjoy the show!"

The show started and Adrien resigned himself to another fun performance without any further clues to the identity of his soulmate. After the show, he was planning on asking the light tech to introduce him to the other backstage staff so he could ask them if they had any idea who his soulmate might be.

She had to be one of the staff members on the show, he was positive of it. How else could he explain the fact that her most-sung songs lined up with the university productions perfectly?

She was here, she had to be. It was just a matter of finding her.

* * *

They were several songs in when Adrien felt the tell-tale tickling at the back of his throat. At first he was positive that it must be a cough, so he took a quick sip of water from the bottle he had brought. It didn't go away.

"You okay?" Jason whispered as Adrien clutched at his throat. Why was his soulmate was singing _now?_ They'd tracked the pattern for the last two plays and she had never once sang during those times. Had she been a stagehand that managed to get in the actual play this time around?

"She's about to sing, I can tell." Adrien rubbed his throat. His eyes strayed down to the stage, where Maria and the children were getting ready to sing. He knew neither Maria nor Liesl were his soulmate, since both of them had already sung. That left four children, one university-aged boy, and... one girl, who looked about fourteen at most.

 _Um_. She wasn't _actually_ as young as she looked, right?

Before Adrien could ask about the girl, a song was being pulled out of his throat. There was no holding it back, not keeping it down. Clearly at this close a range, the effects of the bond were stronger. Warmth flared in his chest and Adrien _beamed_.

"Duuuuude..." Jason whispered, staring for a long moment before realizing he had a job to do. He flicked a few switches before returning his stare to Adrien. "Okay, so I knew you were telling the truth, but seeing it in _person_... _Dude._ "

The song was quite a long one. This time, though, Adrien didn't try to resist it. After all, he had no idea if him resisting had any effect on his soulmate's ability to sing. He sang the best he could, keeping his eyes focused on stage.

"I thought you said you didn't sing yesterday during the show!" Jason hissed as the scene ended and the lights changed. "But you just did now!"

"I didn't. I was waiting the whole time for something to happen and it didn't." Adrien couldn't keep the giant smile off his face. _She was here_.

Jason frowned for a moment more and then lit up, pointing at Adrien. "Oh, I've got it! I don't know how I forgot-we had an exciting afternoon here earlier, even more than normal for opening show. Our Mother Abbess had to be replaced by an understudy due to a family emergency, and Louisa von Trapp got sick. She didn't have an understudy."

Adrien blinked. He didn't know _that_ much about theater, but... "Is that normal?"

"Not at all, but she's one of the uni students playing a kid. There aren't many students that can look that young. Thankfully our costume manager knew the songs and could step in. Or, well, she was bullied in a little bit, but details. She wouldn't have been singing yesterday during rehearsal at all, which fits!"

"Oh!" Adrien looked down at the stage again, where the kids were running around. Louisa von Trapp was among them, dark hair pulled back out of her face. He couldn't make out facial details, not at this distance, but she was _there_. "Is she a uni student, or, uh...?" He trailed off, not sure what to say. She had to be a university student, right? They wouldn't just recruit a lycee student to deal with costumes, right?

Jason grinned. "Of course! She's not as young as she looks, I promise. It's all makeup. She's never acted before today, but she couldn't let the rest of the production down."

"She's doing very well," Adrien commented. He hadn't even noticed that Louisa was perhaps not quite as experienced as the others. She sang beautifully (or at least Adrien assumed so, since the songs sounded great) and never seemed confused about where she was going. Now that he was looking closer, though, he noticed that she did tend to stay in the middle of the group instead of on the outside, and occasionally one of the other "children" would tug on her hand to steer her in a certain direction.

The intermission was utter agony, though for much different reasons than the previous time. Adrien wanted nothing more than to rush down and find his soulmate, but Jason thought it would be a bad idea.

"She's already nervous and inexperienced on stage," Jason pointed out, adjusting one of his switches. "Something like meeting her soulmate would just distract her and throw her off, especially since she thinks that she doesn't have a soulmate."

Adrien blinked. "She's said that?"

"Implied it once, but I don't think she realized it. Unless you've been singing at all, what clue would she have?" Jason sat back in his chair, content that all of the lights were where they were supposed to be. "I'd say wait until the show is over, then I can show you backstage. She'll take longer than the others to go home, since she'll be putting costumes away. In the meantime, I suggest thinking up how you're going to introduce yourself. I doubt strolling up and announcing yourself as her soulmate would go over well."

"Oh. Right." Adrien had been planning on doing just that, but now that he actually thought about it... yeah, not the greatest plan ever, especially if she thought that she didn't have a soulmate. He briefly wondered how she was still under that impression after two hours of Christmas carols, but he supposed that he could ask that later. "Do you know if she knows about musical soulmate bonds?"

"I mentioned it once. I think she was listening." Jason grinned at the memory. "Or she might have been trying to drown me out with her sewing machine. She seemed to be sewing quite aggressively at that particular time, I remember. I was wondering if I should maybe move away from the sewing machine before the needle snapped and went flying or something."

Adrien nodded, mind already racing. If there was something he could sing that would get her attention, preferably something that would have some meaning...

He came up empty. Everything just seemed so _cheesy_.

Adrien's fingers twitched towards his phone. Would Nino or Max have any suggestions? He wrote out and deleted a few messages, running a hand through his hair almost automatically before remembering that he had spent forever trying to get it looking good. Finally, he typed out a simple message and sent it to both of them.

 _I sang._

"So, I happened to notice that your soulmate has black hair," Plagg sing-songed in Adrien's ear, just out of Jason's sight. "Do you think she has blue eyes, too?"

Adrien's cheeks flared pink. "Oh, _shush_."

"And a costume designer! Your _type_ seems to be black-haired, blue-eyed, and creative."

Adrien grinned at the reminder. Oh, that was _right_. His soulmate would doubtless get along _fabulously_ with Marinette. He wondered if she was maybe in the fashion program as well, and what her design aesthetic was. Was she into more into streetwear, or red carpet, or the more _abstract_ designs that his father always scoffed at?

He couldn't _wait_ to find out.

* * *

Adrien jiggled anxiously in his seat as he waited for the audience to finish filing out. Jason had said that he would escort Adrien backstage- "Otherwise, they'll just kick you out, only cast and crew are allowed, technically"- but trying to get out of the light and sound box before the last of the audience left would be too much of a hassle. Besides, they had to wait for Nathalie to show up with the flowers Adrien had ordered.

A knock on the door made both boys jump. Nathalie's face appeared behind a giant bouquet of flowers. Jason rushed to let her in.

"I have the flowers you requested, Adrien," Nathalie announced, handing the flowers over. "Was a friend of yours in the play, or...?"

Adrien knew full well what Nathalie was asking. She wanted to know if Adrien had found his soulmate so she could report to his father, who would no doubt insist on meeting her himself and intimidating her. Adrien was going to push that particular meeting off for as long as possible. "A friend, yeah. Jason here is going to get me backstage."

Nathalie didn't look completely convinced, but she let it drop. "Very well. Will you be coming home soon?"

"I'll probably be hanging around for a bit first. I haven't seen my friend in a while." Adrien hoped that he looked innocent enough to pass. "I drove myself here, though, so I'll be fine."

Jason thankfully waited until Nathalie was gone and the door was closed before turning to Adrien. "What was that all about, dude? And how else would you get here besides driving yourself?" He paused, eying the bouquet. "Also, that's the kind of flowers you get for a lover, not for a friend."

"Yeah, yeah. I'll plead the socially stunted homeschooled kid card if anyone at home asks." Adrien fingered the flowers nervously. He hadn't expected it to be _quite_ so big. "And I don't want my father to know that I've found my soulmate yet. He can be really intimidating, and he was furious when he found out about the singing during photoshoots. I don't want him to scare her off."

"And the driving?"

Adrien winced. "I, uh, have a driver. He's my father's, technically, but he usually drives me around. I've been trying to let him let me drive myself now that I'm older."

Jason laughed. "Rich kid problems." He scanned over the auditorium below them. Only university kids remained, walking between the rows and picking up trash and discarded programs. "We're probably good to go. I'll have to come back to turn all the lights off, but the cleanup crew will still be out for a while."

Adrien followed eagerly as Jason led the way down the stairs. He got more than a couple weird looks from the clean-up crew for the bouquet of flowers but he ignored it, far too excited to care what a bunch of strangers thought of him.

Besides, if Jason's stories were accurate, the students working in the theater tended to be pretty close and gossip spread around fast. They would know why he had the bouquet by the end of tomorrow.

Their first obstacle came in the form of an imposing doorman. He eyed up Adrien and his giant bouquet a bit dubiously before addressing Jason. "Only student workers backstage, you know that. Guests have to meet their actor or actress in the hallway."

"But this is _special,_ Stephan," Jason begged. He gestured to Adrien. "This is Adrien. He's got a musical soulmate bond- when his soulmate sings songs from musicals, he has to too- and her songs led him here. It's Marinette, we're positive."

Adrien froze at the name. _Marinette?_ Like as in his friend Marinette? He had known that she went to this university, and he knew that she had some sort of job, but he was pretty certain that he hadn't ever heard her say anything about her job being on campus or that it was with a theater. Still, how many Marinettes could there possibly be in fashion?

Max would probably know the probability, but Adrien wasn't going to text him right now, not when he was about to meet his soulmate anyway.

In front of them, Stephan didn't look convinced. "Uh-huh. That's what the hallway is for."

"But Marinette will be forever! She has all the costumes to deal with. We can help her put them away. Just this once, Steph?"

The doorman sent a dubious look at Adrien. "I've never heard of a _musical_ soulmate bond. I don't believe it."

Adrien shifted anxiously, glancing at Jason. The other boy looked frustrated. "Can I speak with Miss Bella, please? I'm sure she would understand."

"She's busy." Stephan crossed his arms. It didn't look like they were going to get in any time soon.

Jason looked like he was going to argue, but then a voice floated over to them. Jason's face lit up and he waved to someone over Stephan's shoulder. "Miss Bella! Hey!"

"Hey, Jason! Here to help clean up?" An older woman- a professor, maybe- stuck her head out. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the flowers Adrien was holding. "And who is your friend?"

"I can help, sure. This is Adrien." Jason pushed the blond boy forward. "You know the guy with the musical soulmate bond? It's this guy. He's here to see Marinette."

"Really? Do you mean...?" Miss Bella looked thrilled. "Oh, can you show me? Are you going to sing?"

"But Miss Bella, the rules," Stephan protested. "No non-cast or crew members allowed backstage."

Miss Bella shushed him. "Just this once. Are you going to sing to get her attention?"

Adrien gulped. He hadn't really fully decided. He wasn't the best singer _ever,_ even if he wasn't awful, and since he already knew Marinette- well, as long as it _was_ the same Marinette, maybe the name Marinette was just more common than he thought and it was someone completely different and wouldn't _that_ be confusing- he _could_ always just say hi and explain from there rather than embarrassing himself. "I...maybe?"

"Perfect! Come along, I'll show you where Mari is right now." Miss Bella pulled Adrien along behind her, passing the grumpy Stephan without another glance. Adrien couldn't decide where to look as he was pulled backstage, since scenery and outfits were everywhere. A couple actors were still packing up and they waved to Miss Bella as they passed.

"Uh," Adrien started, then winced when Jason and Miss Bella's attention turned to him. "This is going to sound really bad if I'm right, but, uh... you said that my soulmate is named Marinette? You weren't referring to _Marinette Dupain-Cheng_ by any chance, were you?"

Judging by the startled looks he got, the Marinette in question _was,_ in fact, Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Adrien was _really_ starting to feel like a bit of an idiot.

Jason barked out a laugh. "You know her? _Dude_." He paused and pointed at Adrien. "Wait, you _like_ her, right? It's impossible not to like Marinette."

"It really is," Adrien agreed. "She's been one of my best friends for _years._ I can't believe we somehow missed that."

Jason was laughing properly now, nearly doubled over against the wall. "Oh, that's _hilarious._ Have you never mentioned your whole search to her? You would think she might piece things together!"

Adrien shrugged helplessly. "Apparently it never came up. She's been so busy pretty much ever since the whole soulmate connection thing started, so we've had less time to talk than normal- we only really hang out when our mutual friends are there," he explained. "So she probably knows that I have a soulmate mark, but not what it is."

Adrien could have slapped himself, he really could have. How on Earth had he and Marinette never figured out that they were each other's soulmates? They had seen each other multiple times since his soulmate connection developed, even if she couldn't meet up with them as often because of her busy schedule. Somehow the topic of his soulmate hadn't come up when she was there, apparently.

Maybe that was because they only brought it up when he started singing during their get-togethers, and if Marinette was there then of _course_ he wouldn't be singing. And at Christmas- well, it was no wonder that Marinette hadn't noticed anything, since they were both singing the same songs together anyway. Neither of them were being forced to sing, since they were doing it already.

And- _oh_ , they could have figured this all out _so_ much sooner if he had just sung back at some random time ages ago. Marinette would have gone to Alya, completely puzzled, and then Alya would have gone straight to him. He could have been with her for _ages_ already.

Of course his soulmate was the _single_ person in the world where his strategy of _trying_ to be courteous by not singing would backfire on him. Of _course_. That was just how his luck was.

(But at least he knew that he and Marinette got along and that it would be _so_ , so easy to fall in love with her.)

Miss Bella was giggling. "Oh, that _is_ funny," she said. "The look on your face! Are you going to sing, then, or...?"

"I think I've forgotten all of the songs I know," Adrien admitted. It was embarrassing, really. The one time in his life when it was important that he think up a song, and all he could come up with were cat-themed songs (and they did _not_ need a superhero reveal tonight, not on top of the whole soulmate thing) and Plagg's cheese-themed covers of songs, which- well, there was never really a _good_ time to sing those."I don't even know what I would sing."

Jason's grin widened. "Oh, can I introduce you?" he asked eagerly. "I have an idea!"

Adrien was all too happy to have someone else take the work out of his hands, especially as they came up to the costumes area. The butterflies in his stomach had multiplied, even though he _knew_ Marinette, there was no reason to be this nervous. "Sure, go ahead."

Jason flashed Adrien a grin. "Sweet! Knock-knock, Marinette," he called, raising his voice so he could be heard. He stepped around the corner. From where he stood, Adrien could just see Marinette turn around, a friendly but clearly exhausted look on her face. She had changed into street clothes but still had her pigtails in and her stage makeup on, making her look even younger than usual. "Do you have a moment? I need your help with something."

"Sure, what is it?"

Jason's grin widened, and he took another step into the room. "So, you know how I mentioned the guy with the musical soulmate bond, right?"

Adrien could see Marinette's expression drop marginally at the mention of soulmates, just as it always did. Clearly she didn't have a clue that she was the mysterious match. "Yeah, I remember."

"So he came again tonight," Jason continued. "And, uh, funny story- he didn't sing last time, with Mary Poppins, or last night during the dress rehearsal. But he _did_ sing tonight. And, uh, even _funnier_ story..."

Jason gestured for Adrien to step forward. The shock from the realization of _oh, I was the only one different to perform tonight-_ _ **I'm**_ _the soulmate_ had yet to fade away when Marinette spotted Adrien and the giant bouquet of flowers. Marinette's eyes were huge, and her jaw dropped when she spotted Adrien standing there.

"Surprise?" Adrien offered up weakly. "So apparently I'm a huge idiot who can't put together clues, like, at _all_."

"Are you serious?" Marinette asked. She sounded a bit breathless as she took a step towards him, her eyes wide. "We're soulmates?"

"The most serious I've ever been." Stepping forward, Adrien wracked his brain one more time and finally, _finally_ came up with a song. " _Then say you'll share with me one love, one lifetime. Let me lead you from your solitude._ _Say you need me with you, here beside you._ _Anywhere you go, let me go too. T_ _hat's all I ask of you."_

Adrien saw Marinette's eyes widen as she was forced to sing along with him and her gaze met his, her cheeks turning pink. He stopped singing- partly because his point was made, but mostly because he had forgotten the rest of the lyrics with her looking at him like that- and smiled at her, hopelessly soft. "Hey, soulmate."

Marinette's returning smile was just as soft and utterly enchanting as she stepped into his arms. "Hey to you, too."

* * *

 _A/N: Yaaaaay finally_

 _also yay finally I finished editing this at LAST (sorry it took so long!). I thought this was done and I was happy with it when I was originally scheduled to post it, but then I discovered some things that just weren't flowing right (and I wanted to add in actual singing at the end- Phantom of the Opera, anyone?) and I've been busy enough this past week that I just didn't have the energy for editing and doing it justice._

 _There's a short epilogue after this, and I'll try to get it up in a timely manner (i.e. in a couple of days, instead of an entire four days late)._

 _As always, I love reviews! :)_


	12. Chapter 12

_A/N: Final chapter! I ended up adding a section for Max's reaction (since I hadn't had one before) and it ended up a little longer than planned, whoops._

 _Also, in case anyone managed to miss it in previous chapters/has since forgotten (since I've gotten some reviews that were along that thread): yes, Hawkmoth was defeated. Details were in an earlier author's note._

* * *

Nino glanced down automatically as his phone buzzed. Setting his fork down, he pulled his phone out and checked his messages.

Normally he would just ignore it when he was out on a date with his girlfriend- normally his phone would be turned to silent, so he wouldn't even notice any messages until afterwards- but tonight was different.

Tonight, Adrien was going in for another attempt to find his soulmate. It was his best-bro duty for Nino to be on call in case Adrien struck out again.

 _Adrien: I sang_.

Nino grinned, he couldn't help it. He looked up at Alya in excitement. "His soulmate is there! Adrien sang!"

Oh my gosh! What did he say?" Ever eager, Alya was out of her seat in a moment and at Nino's side, peering over his shoulder at his phone. After a moment, she sighed loudly. " _Really?_ That's all he said about it? Come _on_. I want the deets!"

Nino checked his watch. "Well, he probably hasn't gotten to talk to her yet. It's intermission right now. The most he'll know is that she's there, which character she is, and _maybe_ her name from the program."

"Still! I want to know _everything_." Pouting just a little, Alya headed back to her seat while Nino typed out an excited reply. "D'you think we can invite the two of them over once the play is over? I want to meet her right away!"

Once he tucked his phone away again, Nino grinned at her. "It might be a bit late by then. I'm sure she'll be exhausted, and she and Adrien might want to have some time to get to know each other before you come in and interrogate her."

"Oh, I _suppose_." Alya let out a long sigh as their waitress appeared with their meals. She thanked her, then turned back to Nino, clearly too excited to eat. "This is great! D'you think that Marinette knows Adrien's soulmate? Maybe we can interrogate _her_ after the show is over."

Nino smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. " _Oh!_ Oh, my god, I'm such an idiot. It totally slipped my mind that Marinette works in the theater at her university! We could have asked her to slip Adrien in backstage ages ago." If he had thought of it, then maybe Adrien wouldn't have had any problems this semester with his in-person classes.

Ah, well. What was done was done, and now Adrien had his soulmate.

For the rest of dinner, Nino kept pouncing on his phone whenever it chimed. None of the messages were from Adrien, though, so Nino just grumbled and set his phone back down each time.

And then, just after the waitress swung by with the bill, Adrien texted again. Nino quickly finished adding a tip to their bill, placing his credit card down on top of it, and then snatched up his phone.

 _Adrien: Nobody told me that Marinette worked in this theater!_

Nino winced. "Oh, Adrien's soulmate and Marinette must know each other," he told Alya. He paused. "Hang on, if Marinette knew about Adrien's soulmate bond, and she apparently knows his soulmate well enough for him to find out pretty much right away- why didn't she mention it earlier? Surely his soulmate would have mentioned something!"

" _Did_ Marinette know about Adrien's bond?" Alya asked. She stood up, slipping her coat on. "Did Adrien ever sing when she was there? She's been so busy with her job pretty much since when he started having problems, it's possible that she heard about it once and just forgot or something. It's not like Adrien liked talking about it or anything. He's been avoiding the topic as much as he can recently."

"Oh, maybe." Nino considered his phone for a moment, then typed out a quick response.

 _Nino: does Mari know your soulmate? That's so cool!_

 _Nino: or wait did you two just run into each other backstage?_

"I can't believe that Adrien didn't know that she was working there, though," Alya said. "I mean, we've discussed Marinette's job before, right? About her making costumes and how she's totally wasting her talent there?"

All Nino could do was shrug. "I mean, maybe we mentioned it _once_. But with Adrien, sometimes it feels like things go in one ear and out the other. Not that I blame him, since he has a lot going on and all, but..."

His phone let out a series of chimes, and Nino quickly swiped to read his messages. As soon as he did, though, he let out a barking laugh that made everyone nearby turn to look at them. Alya scrambled Nino's side.

"What? What is it?"

Still chuckling, Nino tilted the screen so that his girlfriend could read it. Adrien's messages shone on the screen.

 _Adrien: actually_

 _Adrien: uh_

 _Adrien: funny story really_

 _Adrien: so it turns out that Marinette is my soulmate_

 _Adrien: not sure how we missed that honestly_

 _Adrien: Surprise?_

"Oh my _god_ those _idiots_ ," Alya groaned, slapping her forehead. "How did they miss that? How did _we_ miss that? Adrien's been singing songs from _musicals_ and Marinette has been working around mostly musicals. I've heard her humming a million times. Well, a couple, at least. I've never heard her sing, though."

"We'll have to tease them forever about this," Nino said with a laugh. "Absolute _idiots_. At least Marinette won't be feeling left out as the only one in our group without a soulmate."

"They'll be so _cute_ together." Alya was grinning, already clearly picturing their friends together in her head. "And they'll be hopeless for at _least_ a few months. Adrien is _such_ a romantic and so is Marinette."

Nino nodded in agreement. "They'll be glued together at the hip, I'll bet," he said. "And Adrien already had a crush on her, I'm sure."

Alya let out a dreamy sigh. "Could they get any cuter? I think _not_."

* * *

Max was partway through arranging a video game tournament when his phone buzzed. He gave it a cursory glance, and then did a double-take when he saw Adrien's name. He reached for it immediately, checking the time as he did.

 _Huh_. It was pretty early yet, so surely they had only gotten as far as the intermission. If his newest theory was correct- that it was a stagehand that was Adrien's soulmate, not a performer- then Adrien wouldn't have had a chance to meet them yet. Perhaps he was just texting Max to keep him in the loop, or because he was anxious and in need of a distraction.

Except that wasn't the case. Adrien had sung this time.

Max frowned, properly turning away from his tournament notes to pull up the notes and spreadsheets that he had made based on the data they had about Adrien's soulmate. Adrien hadn't sent any further details, which was puzzling. Nothing about which character his soulmate was playing, or a name, or anything. He was probably a bit distracted, of course, so that oversight was forgivable.

It was hard to turn back to his work, but Max forced himself to not bombard Adrien with questions. He was sensitive to the fact that discovering one's soulmate was a big deal, and his curiosity _could_ wait.

The wait until Adrien's next text felt like an eternity. When it came, Max snatched up his phone again. This time, Adrien had sent a photo. It was a selfie with Adrien and another _very_ familiar face- their old collège and lycée classmate Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Max glanced down at the caption.

 _Adrien: So guess who apparently works backstage?_

Max's eyes practically popped out of his head. _Marinette?_ Then he shook his head.

No, no, Adrien couldn't _possibly_ mean what Max thought he meant. To the best of Max's knowledge, Marinette regularly met up with Alya, Nino, and Adrien. If she were his soulmate, then they would have known _ages_ ago. Adrien must have just not realized where she worked, and then had a lovely surprise of another person who could show him around backstage and help him find his soulmate. That would be nice for him to have a friend there, since to the best of Max's knowledge, neither Alya nor Nino had been able to accompany Adrien to the musical. It hadn't been ideal, not with Adrien as nervous as he had been, but it couldn't be helped.

There were no further texts, and Max went back to his work. Adrien had no doubt found his soulmate, and they would be getting to know each other now. Max made a mental note to text Adrien before the end of the week- perhaps they could meet up and he would get to meet Adrien's new soulmate.

But for the rest of the evening, he could bask in the glory of another problem solved using logic and deduction.

The next morning, Max was picking up a coffee on campus before his first class when he ran into Nino. He lifted a hand in greeting, and Nino grinned and hurried across the small shop to join him.

"I assume that Adrien found his soulmate last night?" Max said as soon as Nino was within earshot. His words were met with a burst of laughter and he frowned. "…did I miss something?"

"Did Adrien not tell you everything?" Nino asked, still grinning. "Oh _man_. What _did_ he tell you?"

"He sent a picture. Apparently he ran into Marinette backstage." Which, now that he had had a night to think about it, Max was exasperated that he hadn't known that little tidbit of information beforehand. With a connection on staff, it could have been _so_ easy to have Adrien go in with Marinette one afternoon and just find his soulmate then during rehersals, without the need for special seating arrangements. "It would have been nice to know that she worked there."

Nino laughed. "It slipped all of our minds, honestly. Like, I realized _after_ Adrien sent that message that oh, yeah, that _is_ where Marinette works. But yeah, she wasn't just a backstage guide last night. It turns out that _Marinette_ is Adrien's soulmate."

Max's brain almost short-circuited as he took in this new information. He had never, _ever_ taken into consideration the possibility that Adrien's soulmate might be someone that he already knew, since he had _assumed_ that Adrien would have talked about it enough to eliminate that possibility. Looking back, that was a mistake. Adrien had a history of not sharing his problems with others, even people who were close to him. All it would take was an avoidance of talking about the problem and an assumption that Adrien knew where Marinette worked, and both Adrien and Marinette would continue their lives, completely oblivious.

He had thought that he had taken all variables into account when making his plan to minimize the amount of time it would take to find Adrien's soulmate. That was twice that he had been proved wrong, now- first with the assumption that the soulmate was a performer, and now with the assumption that the soulmate _must_ be a stranger.

Max did not like being wrong. It was frustrating to find out that there were still holes in his logic and assumptions.

"They've sent me a couple pictures, and I can tell that they'll be sickeningly sweet already," Nino continued. "All cuddly and everything. And they're both _super_ happy, Alya and I talked to them a little bit last night after the show. I think we were all kicking ourselves for not communicating a little better, 'cause if we had, this all would have been wrapped up _ages_ ago. But we didn't, so they're super-glad for your help because otherwise Adrien would have been wandering around like a sad lost duckling for another couple of years."

Faced with this deluge of words, all Max could think to say was "Of course."

"He's already texting me asking for date ideas because he turns into a pile of helpless mush when confronted by a crush, so I wouldn't be surprised if he texts you, too," Nino continued. "Seriously, just remind him that he _knows_ Marinette. It won't help, probably, but he'll get himself straightened out eventually."

"Right," Max managed. He glanced at the clock on the wall and jumped when he saw the time. He was going to be running behind on his carefully crafted schedule if he stayed for much longer. "Ah, I think I have to go. I have class soon. Thanks for updating me."

"No problem! Have a good day, Max!"

Max waved good-bye to Nino and then headed out of the café and down the street towards his class building, where his Statistics class awaited. He couldn't help but look forward to it even more than usual after the rest of the morning.

After all, numbers were _much_ easier to work with than humans. There weren't so many dratted variables that popped up out of nowhere to disrupt his carefully made calculations.

* * *

Chat Noir was practically bouncing as he ran to his and Ladybug's meeting spot, dancing along the rooftops between steps.

He had found his soulmate, after years and years of thinking that he didn't have one and over a year of the most frustrating bond known to mankind, and she was _amazing_. He and Marinette had already gone on one date- they had gone out together for lunch, since Marinette was busy at the theater in the evenings- and he had met her parents and been welcomed to the family. They got on spectacularly even without their friends there to keep the conversation going, and just before he left for patrol they had just scheduled another date for after the last of the _Sound of Music_ shows.

(Adrien had attended every last one of the shows, sitting up in the light booth with Jason except for the sing-along show, when he got to sit in the crowd. He wanted to support Marinette, who had to fill in for the sick actress for the rest of the run of the show. Since they had yet to kiss, mostly because they wanted to take things slow, they both had to make sure to be careful with the timing of their singing for now.)

He hadn't told his father yet, partly out of respect for Marinette's busy schedule and partly because he was putting it off because Mr. Agreste was bound to be a downer on their excitement at finding each other. But they had told all of their friends, and several of Adrien's classmates, and then the entire cast at the theater, and everyone told them that they were already adorable together.

Life was _great_. Adrien was floating.

Even with his head in the clouds, Chat Noir didn't miss the fact that his partner was in an equally good mood when she arrived. A huge grin was on her face, and clearly it wasn't going to be leaving anytime soon.

"Hey, Bug," Chat Noir greeted, scooping Ladybug up and spinning her around once. "You're cheerful tonight."

"So are you." Ladybug was practically _glowing_ as she grinned up at him. "But yeah, I found out just earlier this week that I have a soulmate- I had thought that I hadn't before, so it was really just-!" She clasped her hands together, absolutely lighting up as she did. "And they're one of my best friends, and we just scheduled our second date, and I'm so happy I could sing!- but I won't, because my boyfriend said he had something going on tonight, and I don't want to bother him."

Chat Noir frowned slightly, briefly sidetracked. It was fantastic that Ladybug had found her soulmate- he knew from experience how much it sucked to want a soulmate and think that he didn't have one- but that last comment was _odd_ , and something about it niggled at him, like he should pay attention to it. "Uh. If you don't mind me asking- what does singing have to do with your soulmate being busy?"

Ladybug beamed. "Oh, it's because of our bond! It's a really strange one- it's a musical bond, so he has to sing when I do. And I've already gotten him into _so_ much trouble accidentally, before I knew about the bond, so I don't want to slip up again. He didn't say what he was doing, but I'm assuming that if he was telling me about it, then he wouldn't want to get forced into singing-"

She kept talking, but Chat Noir had checked out slightly, staring at his partner. He had been amused by the coincidence that he and Ladybug had managed to find their soulmates in the same week- within days of each other, even- but some things were starting to sound a little _too_ similar to be entirely coincidental.

Not to mention the fact that Ladybug also had black hair and blue eyes and a creative streak a mile wide, like someone else he knew.

"Ladybug?" Chat Noir started tentatively, once she was done talking. Her eyes snapped to him. "Uh, so, funny coincidence- _I_ just found my soulmate a few days ago after searching for ages. We just set up our second date before I came out. And, uh, it was a musical bond, too." An impish grin slid onto his face. "You could say that I found her through _the sound of music._ "

The way her eyes widened left no doubt in Chat Noir's mind. Ladybug was Marinette, his soulmate. His amazing, _incredible_ soulmate.

"Adrien?" Ladybug whispered, stepping closer to him. Her eyes were wide as she took him in, her fingers reaching for his hair and brushing it across his forehead, pushing his bangs into his normal style.

Chat Noir's grin was practically splitting his cheeks. "Hey, Marinette."

"Oh my _god_."

His laugh this time was loud and free. "Oh my _god_ , we're blind. I didn't think we could get more oblivious than the whole soulmate thing, and yet we somehow managed it."

"There was magic interfering," Ladybug managed, overtaken by giggles in front of him. She stepped forward into his arms, still giggling as she wound her arms around his shoulders. "Otherwise we would have been found out by everyone ages ago. Alya would have figured me out within a week."

"My _father_ would have figured me out within a month, and what a disaster _that_ would have been." Chat Noir hugged Ladybug, pressing a kiss to her crown. She immediately wriggled around in his arms to press a returning kiss to his cheek and he grinned.

He and Marinette had been getting a bit more tactile with each other as they hung out more after performances and during the day between classes, but he and Ladybug already often hung out sprawled out all over each other. If their friends thought that they were cuddly before- well, Chat Noir had a sneaking suspicion that they hadn't seen anything yet.

"I can't believe we've been so close for so long," Chat Noir said after a few minutes. He kissed the top of Ladybug's head again. "And I can't believe it took so long for our bond to develop. Like, if you compare how long Nino and Alya have known about each other..."

"Tikki told me that being active fighters sort of repressed the bond developing," Ladybug told him, and Chat Noir blinked in surprise. Plagg had never told _him_ that, even though he had asked the little kwami if the Miraculous was affecting the bond _loads_ of times. _Someone_ was going to have to forgo their favorite cheese tonight for that little stunt. "Apparently once the bond is there and we find each other as civilians, we would be able to see past the Miraculous magic."

"Oh! So it's no coincidence, then, that we figured each other out tonight." He grinned. "I _did_ wonder. We've shared enough about our lives ever since we defeated Hawkmoth and Mayura that we _should_ have at least gotten suspicious before tonight _._ "

"Yeah, we can blame that _all_ on the kwamis." Ladybug shifted in his arms, and Chat Noir didn't hesitate to sit down on a nearby chimney, pulling Ladybug into his lap as he did so that they could see each other. "I'm glad you found me, though. I'm glad you're my soulmate."

Chat Noir smiled down at her, soft and loving. "I'm glad, too."

And as Ladybug pulled him into a kiss, Chat Noir knew that there was nowhere that he would rather be.

 _Fin._


End file.
